The National Chief Imam of the republic of Ghana Sheikh Osman Nuhu Sharubutu has offered special prayers for forty (40) Zongo girls who have been selected to go to Cuba to read medicine as part of efforts by government to address religious and gender reproductive health issues in Muslim communities in Ghana in the long term.
The Chief Imam offered special prayers for Vice President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia who first announced this deal last year which has come to pass.
Dr. Bawumia had said the Akufo-Addo government is committed to helping boost the Human Resource capacity of Zongo and other inner city kids who face challenges breaking cost barriers in education.
The Chief Imam received the first batch of the forty (40) students from Zongo at his residence in Fadama. He offered prayers for the girls and urged them to “be focused and not disappoint the Muslim community and their parents”.
The Chief Imam also praised the Zongo ministry for their collaborative work with the office of the Vice President.
The students who were deliberately selected from needy Zongo homes across the 16 regions of Ghana bid farewell to the National Chief Imam and promised to return to help their communities once they are done with the full medical course.
The 40 girls will be benefiting from among other things, scholarship that also caters for their feeding and accommodation through the Zongo Development Fund.
The other scholarship components are being borne by the Cuban government through a deal brokered by Vice President Alhaji Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia.
It will be recalled that the Government of Cuba accepted to train forty (40) brilliant but needy medical students a year from Zongo, inner-city and other deprived communities in Ghana following a proposal by the Vice President of the Republic, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, to the Government of Cuba to extend the special arrangement between the two countries for the training of health personnel in deprived communities.
Vice President Bawumia made the proposal when he held bilateral talks with the President of Cuba, H.E. Miguel Diaz-Canel as part of a two-day official visit to the Caribbean country this year.
The President of Cuba noted that over the years the government of Cuba has tried to demystify the training of doctors by making sure the study of medicine is not the preserve of the elite. Cuba has 80,000 doctors as a result.
