The Orthopaedic Unit at the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH) has raised concern over a growing number of road accident-related cases, warning that the surge is putting increasing pressure on ward space and care capacity.
According to MyJoyOnline, the Head of the Orthopaedic Unit, Dr Michael Lit, said the unit is witnessing a significant influx of orthopaedic patients, many of them young people, including commercial tricycle operators, popularly known as “Pragia” riders.
Dr Lit linked the trend to rising road crashes and urged drivers and tricycle operators to comply with road traffic regulations to help reduce injuries and hospital admissions. His remarks were made during an interview with Adom News at a donation event involving the Assembly Member for Manso Takorase, Dominic Bonsu, who presented medical equipment to the unit.
“If you visit the Orthopaedic Ward at Komfo Anokye, you will realise that the wards are becoming overcrowded because many young people engage in reckless driving, which often results in road crashes,” Dr Michael Lit said, according to MyJoyOnline.
The warning points to a dual public policy challenge: road safety enforcement on one hand, and hospital infrastructure capacity on the other. In the same report, Dr Lit said space constraints remain one of the unit’s biggest operational challenges, especially in managing fracture cases.
“Our biggest challenge has to do with space. We need more room to properly manage patients with fractures, but currently, we are forced to manage with the limited space available,” he said.
The comments are likely to resonate strongly in Kumasi and beyond, where road crashes involving motorcycles and tricycles continue to generate frequent concern among families, transport users and emergency services. While the report did not provide a new official statistical breakdown of the cases, the warning from the head of one of Ghana’s key referral hospital units signals sustained pressure on trauma-related care.
Dominic Bonsu, the Manso Takorase Assembly Member, used the occasion to urge more support for health facilities, saying national development should not be left to government alone. The donation itself forms part of the immediate local response to facility needs, but the broader issue raised by KATH remains systemic: accident prevention and hospital capacity must move together.
