“He Didn’t Die. We Let Him Go”, A Dirge for Dr. Adu Ofori By Kay Codjoe
“He Didn’t Die. We Let Him Go”, A Dirge for Dr. Adu Ofori By Kay Codjoe; They say he died in transit. That somewhere between life and arrival, between Kumasi and Accra, between hope and heartbreak, he let go.
But I have spoken with his brother, Kwadwo Ofori Jnr. I have listened not just to facts, but to silence. And I am here to tell you Dr. Adu Ofori didn’t simply die.
We let him go.
On the morning of 29 June 2025, a 43-year-old doctor, a husband, father, son, and savior to thousands, felt a storm building in his chest. He recognized the signs. Myocardial infarction. A heart attack.
He drove himself to Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH). He knew time was everything. In cardiology, they say time is muscle. Every second lost costs the heart a bit of itself.
But time was all he had. Equipment? No. No cath lab. No infrastructure. Not in Ashanti. Not in the very hospital whose name still echoes with Otumfuo’s renovation dreams and donations.
The doctors at KATH tried. They pushed past the limitations. But in Ghana, skill is not the problem. Systems are.
So calls were made. Kwadwo tells me how frantic everything became. The Ashanti Regional Minister himself, Dr. Frank Amoakohene, intervened. There was urgency. There was even a plane. A full medical team. A plan to fly Adu to Accra, because in this country, proximity to the capital is the only reliable insurance policy.
Ghana’s second-largest city could not save one of its own. A doctor. A lifeline to others. He was airborne, still breathing. Kwadwo tells me he was alive when the plane touched down. But between the tarmac and the UGMC gate, Ghana’s health system pulled the final thread.
He died en route. UGMC staff, prepped and ready, received a corpse.
Do not dare call this a natural death. This was a national betrayal.
Ask yourself what if Dr. Adu Ofori was not a doctor? What if he was a teacher in Techiman, a farmer in Bole, a market woman in Ho? Would there have been a helicopter? A minister’s phone call? A team of trained responders? Or just a ride in the back of a trotro and silence upon arrival?
This is not about Dr. Adu Ofori alone. This is about the quiet genocide of Ghanaian potential by a system so broken it kills more from absence than error.
Ask anyone who works in the wards, in the dispensaries, in the theatres. The only thing that works in Ghana’s health system is the part that extracts money.
Beds are imported, but patients sleep on benches. Supplies are procured, but oxygen runs dry. Buildings are commissioned, but cath labs are myths outside Accra. Meanwhile, contracts are padded, audits delayed, and dead citizens buried under red tape.
We built hospitals without equipment. We trained doctors and gave them resignation letters disguised as conditions of service. We lined our procurement processes with thieves in suits. And now that a man who wore the white coat has died because of our collective negligence, we want to respond with elegies?
No. This time, Ghana must not return to business as usual.
Every minister of health past and present, every procurement officer who looked away, every government that cut ribbons but not excuses, you are all complicit. You build statues for the fallen, but when the living fall, you build press releases.
Let this be different.
Do not let Kwadwo bury his brother and walk away into silence. Do not let us write poetry and forget policy. Do not let this become just another obituary.
Let Dr. Adu haunt your conscience.
Let him sit beside you in Parliament when you debate a new health budget. Let him whisper in your ear each time you recite “Your Health, Our Concern” knowing full well that KATH, Ghana’s second-largest referral hospital serving millions, still has no functioning cath lab.
Let him appear in every hospital corridor that reeks of bleach and quiet despair, reminding us that sterility is not the same as care and structure is not the same as system.
And to the government past, present, and future, let this be your reckoning. Build the cath labs. Fix the referral pathways. Equip the hospitals. Or step aside for those who will.
Kwadwo Ofori Jnr. told me the funeral is on August 9. Ghana has between now and then to decide what kind of nation it wants to be—one that buries its best with fanfare, or one that finally dares to fix what kills them.
Do not let him rest in peace. Not yet. Let him disturb the national sleep. Let his absence stir the country into conscience.
Let Ghana build a system, not a eulogy.
Kay Codjoe
For Dr. Adu. For Kwadwo. For all of us.
