Dr Abdulai Given Martin Luther King Jnr Award
The United States Embassy has conferred on Dr David Fuseini Abdulai, founder of the Shekhinah Clinic in Gurugu in Tamale, the 2012 Martin Luther King Jr. Award for Peace and Social Justice.
The award is in recognition of Dr Abdulai’s “unwavering commitment to the poorest and most vulnerable citizens of Tamale in the Northern Region”.
Since 2008, the U.S. Embassy has presented the Martin Luther King Jr. Award for Peace and Social Justice to Ghanaian citizens who personify the philosophy and actions of Dr Martin Luther King Jr. and according to the US Ambassador to Ghana, Mr Donald Teitelbaum, Dr Abdulai’s selfless devotion to providing free medical treatment and other services to the poorest citizens of Tamale was worth honouring.
Dr King, the 1964 Nobel Peace laureate, played a pivotal role in the African-American civil rights movements in the United States during the 1950s and 1960s.
The purpose of the award is to recognise a Ghanaian citizen, who, in the same spirit as Dr King, is helping to build a culture of peacemaking, dialogue and conflict resolution, while promoting respect for human rights and peace in the communities where he or she lives and works.
In 1989, Dr Abdulai founded the Shekhinah Clinic which is funded entirely through donations and staffed by 27 volunteers.
The volunteers mainly attend to the mentally and physically ill/challenged, beggars, social outcasts, HIV and AIDS patients.
In 1999, he established a second clinic in Wamale in the southern part of Tamale and presently, the two clinics serve an average of 120 people and treats approximately 20,000 outpatients every year, while it carries out surgical operations on about 1,000 undergo patients.
As part of his work, Dr Abdulai provides free lunch every afternoon to people on the street and the programme dubbed “Meals-on-Wheels” covers a 65-kilometre radius and feeds an average of 150 destitute and mentally ill people daily.
He also provides medical services and consultations to prisoners in the Tamale Central Prison and those living in the Nkanchina Leper Colony.
A skilled advocate, Dr Abdulai, has succeeded in leveraging partnerships or donations from a number of donors and organisations to provide the maximum benefit to those most in need.
In receiving the award, Dr Abdulai said he was born into an extremely poverty-stricken family in which all his 10 siblings died due to poverty-related illnesses and, therefore, he had to survive on the generosity of others and added that he was giving back to society what was given him by others years ago.
He also said the award would motivate him and the numerous volunteers who worked with him at the two clinics, adding that it would also inspire others working at the grassroot levels to do more for the vulnerable in society.
A recipient of several scholarships, the kindness of various benefactors made it possible for him to go through school and subsequently, the University of Ghana Medical School, from where he graduated in 1979.
After medical school, he worked at the Korle Bu Teaching and the 37 Military hospitals.
Dr Abdulai who has a wife, Mariam, who also works at the clinics, and five children. He obtained a Postgraduate Diploma in Tropical Medicine and Health from the University of Liverpool in 1985 and also worked in Zambia and the Central African Republic.
Previous award recipients are: Bishop Vincent Boi Nii and Alhaji Al-Hussein Zakaria for their efforts to promote peace and social justice (2008). Ms Angela Dwamena-Aboagye was honoured in 2009 for assisting abused women and children; Madam Janet Adama Mohammad for her work in peace-building to address local and regional conflicts in 2010, and Mr George Achibra for rescuing trafficked children working on Lake Volta in 2011.