Fly Dr. Abdulai abroad for treatment

My traumatic experience with the criminal treatment meted my own doctor, the legendary Neurosurgeon of the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital, the Russian-trained Dr. Mustaffa (I may have misspelled his name) by Messrs. Jerry John Rawlings and John Evans Atta-Mills, surprises me not the least bit that Dr. David Abdulai would also be afforded short-shrift treatment by the Mahama-led government of the National Democratic Congress (NDC)

(See “Dr. Abdulai Paying His [Own] Bills Despite Mahama’s Intervention” 3News.com / Ghanaweb.com 8/12/16).

Until I came across the afore-referenced news article, I had never heard of the man. But, of course, this is all to be expected since I have been out of the country for some 31 years now; I celebrated my auspicious absence from Ghana on July 27.

And I have never regretted my long sojourn, for I have shockingly watched the rag-tag junta of the Rawlings-chaperoned erstwhile Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC) take our country to the dogs.

And presently, the Rawlings-minted cognate government of the so-called National Democratic Congress has unconscionably downgraded the hitherto enviable status of Ghana as a fast-rising middle-income nation to a barely recognizable lumpen-proletarian economy, all in the specious name of probity, accountability, transparency and justice.

Indeed, about the only thing decidedly transparent about Ghana is the megalomaniacal viciousness with which our leaders have raped and continue to rape our nation blind and hopeless, in spite of her having been generously endowed by Divine Providence with humongous human and natural resources.

I have been trying to write about this all-too-common mistreatment of Dr. Abdulai by the National Democratic Congress’ governments all day without much success, because anytime I sit down to highlight the tragic plight of this great patriot among a brigade of kleptocratic brigands, the indelible image of Dr. Mustaffa interposes.

I have also been trying for some time now, with little success, to locate anybody with worthwhile information about the life and medical practice of this greatest of great postcolonial Ghanaian physicians.

Recently, for instance, a UK-resident doctor by the name of Mr. Dyson e-mailed me to find out whether I had been able to follow through with a promise that I made a while back to pen and publish a biography of this most politically savaged and humiliated of Ghanaian medical practitioners of our time.

The story of Dr. Abdulai is no less heart-wrenching. He is described as a medical practitioner resident in Ghana’s northern regional capital of Tamale who has spent the bulk of the past two decades, or most of his adult professional life, delivering free medical services to the abjectly poor and destitute in the largest geographical division of the country.

Indeed, so generous to a fault has Dr. Abdulai become with his talent and resources that the residents of the municipal community whom he has been so godly and diligently serving for all these harrowing years have nicknamed him “The Mad Doctor.”

And true to the expression, Dr. Abdulai is generously mad. We learn, for example, that through his personal ingenuity, two community health clinics have been established in the Tamale municipality. And then, as has invariably been the case, Dr. Abdulai was recently diagnosed with Stage 4 Thyroid Cancer. And that was when the true colors of the Mahama-led government of the National Democratic Congress came into full play.

To be certain, this is what the key operatives of the ruling National Democratic Congress have always been known to do better than almost every one of their political opponents, in particular the Akufo-Addo-led main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP), to wit, brutally maltreat the most diligent, magnanimous and the best and brightest of Ghanaian citizenry.

According to news reports, learning about the grave plight of Dr. Abdulai, obvious pun intended, President John Dramani Mahama, who also happens to hail from the Northern Region, asked that “The Mad Doctor” be flown to the 37th Military Hospital in Accra, described as Ghana’s best equipped medical center.

But, alas, that was about the last time that anybody heard about the active involvement of the SADA scam-artist in the plight of Dr. Abdulai. We are told that physicians attending to “The Mad Doctor” have been jostling the eminent patient’s largely indigent family members to get them to foot his medical bills.

I really thought it was an April-Fool’s Joke when I initially learned about it, until reading further down the afore-referenced news article, I came across a sentence in which Dr. Victor Bampoe, described as the nation’s Deputy Health Minister, was reported to be urging donors who, by the way, had not been prompted by our Cash-and-Carry scam-artist government, to continue donating into a fund established by some well-wishers to call in some favors for “The Mad Doctor.”

You would have thought that the Chief Resident of the Flagstaff House would have had this Good Samaritan promptly flown out of the country for first-class treatment, the way it was done for the late President John Evans Atta-Mills. Talk of one good turn deserving another.