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Gold Fields Foundation, Rotary Club hold medical outreach in 5 communities
Doctors taking vitals of patients at the Abekoase site
Gold Fields Ghana Foundation (GFGF) on Saturday partnered Rotary Club of Ghana to embark on a medical outreach for about 1,800 people in five host communities in the Prestea Huni-Valley Municipality of the Western Region.
The annual programme, which covered Samahu, Abekoase, Tebe, Pepesa and Bompieso communities of the Tarkwa and Damang Mines, attracted Rotarians from Tarkwa, Kumasi, Kumasi East, Tarkoradi Anaji and Tamale.
Activities undertaken included health education, breast and prostate screening, eye test, test for blood sugar, blood pressure, malaria and administering of medication.
In an interview with journalists, the Executive Secretary of GFGF, Mr. Abdel-Razak Yakubu, said 70 health officials from the Tarkwa Municipal Hospital, Apinto Government Hospital, Euracare Diagnostic Centre, Huniso and Abosso CHPS Compounds joined officials of the Foundation and Community Relations Department for the outreach.
He said, GFGF spent about GHȻ590,000.00 on this year’s annual medical outreach, as part of its interventions to promote good health and the well-being of host communities.
He added that, health was critical to the economic activities of the community members who provided the labour and also fed the mine.
He told journalists of an exciting story of a breast cancer patient from Damang, who, two years ago, tested positive to the disease, but, successfully went through surgery and is alive and well.
Mr Yakubu said “The Foundation has invested US$2.9M in support of health and wellbeing activities since its inception.
He said six doctors and a nurse who are past beneficiaries of the GFGF scholarships volunteered to assist in this year’s outreach.
A Foundation Committee Member, who is from Rotary Club of Takoradi Anaji, Isabella Miakrah Nyamah, also spoke about the group’s commitment to promote the health of communities.
She said “Today, you see a high turnout of Rotarians and we’re here to reach out to our communities. In the month of October. We also focused on breast cancer care and we want to reduce the incidence of the disease which is on the surge even among teenagers.”
Dr Charles Yiway, from the Emergency Unit, University of Cape Coast (UCC) Teaching Hospital, explained that the community health outreach was critical as it had helped to rope in patients who needed urgent attention.
From Clement Adzei Boye
One of the issues we have been grappling with as a nation is corruption, and it has had such a devastating effect on our national development. I have been convinced that until morality becomes the foundation upon which our governance system is built, we can never go forward as a nation.
Our traditional practices, which have shaped our cultural beliefs, have always espoused values that have kept us along the straight and the narrow and have preserved our societies since ancient times.
These are values that frown on negative habits like stealing, cheating, greediness, selfishness, etc. Our grandparents have told us stories of societies where stealing was regarded as so shameful that offenders, when caught, have on a number of instances committed suicide.
In fact, my mother told me of a story where a man who was living in the same village as her mother (my grandmother), after having been caught stealing a neighbour’s cockerel, out of shame committed suicide on a mango tree. Those were the days that shameful acts were an abomination.
Tegare worship, a traditional spiritual worship during which the spirit possesses the Tegare Priest and begins to reveal secrets, was one of the means by which the society upheld African values in the days of my grandmother and the early childhood days of my mother.
Those were the days when the fear of being killed by Tegare prevented people from engaging in anti-social vices. These days, people sleeping with other people’s wives are not uncommon.
These wrongful behaviour was not countenanced at all by Tegare. One was likely going to lose his life on days that Tegare operates, and so unhealthy habits like coveting your neighbour’s wife was a taboo.
Stealing of other people’s farm produce, for instance, could mean certain death or incapacitation of the whole or part of the body in the full glare of everybody. People realised that there were consequences for wrongdoing, and this went a long way to motivate the society to adhere to right values.
Imagine a President being sworn into office and whoever administers the oath says, “Please say this after me: I, Mr. …., do solemnly swear by God, the spirits of my ancestors and the spirits ruling in Ghana, that should I engage in corrupt acts, may I and my family become crippled, may madness become entrenched in my family, may incurable sicknesses and diseases be my portion and that of my family, both immediate and extended.”
Can you imagine a situation where a few weeks afterwards the President goes to engage in corrupt acts and we hear of his sudden demise or incapacitation and confessing that he engaged in corrupt acts before passing or before the incapacitation—and the effect it will have on his successor? I believe we have to critically examine this option to curb corruption.
My grandmother gave me an eyewitness account of one such encounter where a woman died instantly after the Tegare Priest had revealed a wrong attitude she had displayed during the performance on one of the days scheduled for Tegare spirit manifestation.
According to her story, the Priest, after he had been possessed by the spirit, declared that for what the woman had done, he would not forgive her and that he would kill. Instantly, according to my grandmother, the lady fell down suddenly and she died—just like what happened to Ananias and his wife Sapphira in Acts Chapter 5.
NB: ‘CHANGE KOTOKA INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT TO KOFI BAAKO
By Laud Kissi-Mensah
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BY ROBERT EKOW GRIMMOND-THOMPSON
