07/02/2013
Dr. Fuseini Abdulai is still our personality pick for this week. We appreciate and celebrate him. We urge you all to "LIKE" the organization, be part of the process and re-post this.
Personality of the week: Dr Abdulai - The Mad Doctor
Dr. David Fuseini Abdulai, Presented with the 2012 Martin Luther King Jr. Award for Peace and Social Justice
Northerners are largely perceived as kind and warm people. There are naturally different variations or levels of this kindness. One such level of kindness which may not be too common is the one Dr. David Fuseini Abdulai possesses. In 1989, Dr David Abdulai founded the first Shekhinah Clinic in Gurugu – Tamale. Dr David performed his first emergency surgery under a mango tree, before any of the buildings had even been finished! Today, the Shekhina Clinic is critically important; approximately 20 000 outpatients are treated every year, and around 1000 undergo operation. Approximately 2500 are treated in the wards.
In the latter part of 2009, the entire country woke up to the news of how the exceptional achievements of a rather humble man with the greatest compassion for his fellow man went unrecognized for nearly two decades. That was when the searchlight of the first edition of the TV Reality Show, Touching Lives put together by telecommunications provider Airtel Ghana, travelled up north and settled on the hitherto forgotten hero, Dr. David Fuseini Abdulai, founder of the Shekhinah Clinic (Home of Love) in Tamale.
Compelled by the countless nominations he received and his incredible work for the needy around him, Touching Lives unveiled and restoring hope to the visibly hopeless “societal outcast”, whom he made kings and queens in his Home of Love. Instantly, The Mad Doctor as he is affectionately called, shot to national fame after the awards and subsequently, the screening of his episode, which happened to be the flagship story of the entire first edition.. Now a national figure and a hero, it was not difficult arriving at the conclusion that more awards were going to rain on him for his great sacrifice to our great region and humanity. It is not as though Dr. Abdulai needs the awards to motivate him any more than he already is.
Last year, as the United States of America celebrates the 83rd anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King’s birth, the US Embassy (Ghana) finds no other person better deserving of the prestigious Martin Luther King (MLK), Jr. Award for Peace and Social Justice than Dr. Abdulai, seen to have best personified the philosophy and actions of Dr. Luther King, Jr. Noble as the award is, it comes to add to his laurels, pushing him further from the national stage onto a much more coveted international platform. Not only does he join the league of noble past awardees and or recipients of this esteemed award, he brings along his own zest of selflessness and benevolence redefined which stands him in a unique stead among the previous recipients.
What makes him outstanding?
He has targeted his acts of kindness mainly at the lowly placed in society and his love for the North where it’s most needed. He planted himself in Gurugu, by then a remote but vantage location to serve not only the hopeless and destitute in the three northern regions but neighboring Togo and Benin and Burkina Faso. He houses the homeless, the destitute and the terminally ill, shielding them from the scorns of society and feeding them on a regular cycle of three meals a day. What is more amazing is the additional task of feeding the mentally ill on the streets of Tamale and the surrounding communities on a daily basis without failure and this he has done since January 1992. As if that is not enough of a burden for one man to shoulder, he has taken unto himself the responsibility of - without ever defaulting - feting during Christmas over 3000 lepers, mentally ill and perceived misfits.
This is the life of Dr. Abdulai – “the mad doctor”. A proud son of the northern region, our pride and we celebrate him today because HE PAVES THE WAY