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Gig for Ghana 2017 Gig for Ghana 2017

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Gig for Ghana 2017 featuring famous musical astronaut Chris Hadfield

Gig for Ghana 2017 featuring famous musical astronaut Chris Hadfield

Steamboat presents the 2nd annual Gig For Ghana 2017 at the Clayton Hotel, Limerick on Thursday, November 9, 2017, at 7:30 pm. This fundraising concert Gig For Ghana 2017  will feature the beloved musical astronaut Col. Chris Hadfield, Denis Allen, Norman Morrissey and the Kings of Connaught. 

Commander Hadfield, who has circumnavigated the globe from space 2,500 times, is a long-time fan of Ireland and made the first-ever tweet from space ‘as Gaeilge’ to his half a million followers in 2013. He since became a Tourism Ireland ambassador, participating in three short films featuring unique Irish scenery and culture, including on the Wild Atlantic Way. The former Commander of the International Space Station shot to fame after his cover of David Bowie’s ‘Space Oddity’ went viral with 40 million views on YouTube.

Commander Chris Hadfield will arrive at Shannon Airport where there will be an airside media reception on Thursday evening at around 4:30 p.m. for a weekend engagement in Limerick. Commander Hadfield has offered photos from his time in Space as well as his famous guitar for auction at the event.


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In 2016 a partnership titled Friends of Ghana NGO was formed between UL Hospitals Group, the University of Limerick and the national health service of Ghana. This partnership initially focused on training primary healthcare staff in basic life-saving skills in the remote Upper West Region.

Friends of Ghana NGO operates as an independent NGO but UL Hospitals’ involvement, which has been ratified by the board, will see the realisation of the Group’s ambition to establish formal links in a developing country.

Gig for Ghana 2017

Meeting the Wa Naa, or King, of the Wala in Ghana’s Upper West Region were some of the Friends of Ghana: Dr. Khalifa Elmusharaf, Senior Lecturer in Public Health at University of Limerick; Prof Fiona Murphy, Professor of Clinical Nursing, University of Limerick; Katie Sheehan, Assistant Director of Nursing, Croom Hospital; Kelly Hadfield, Founder of Ghana Medical Help and GEMS student; Prof Paul Finucane, chairman, Friends of Ghana; Harriet Burgess, GEMS student and Prof Des Leddin, Adjunct Clinical Professor, University of Limerick and Head of Gastroenterology, Dalhousie University, Nova Scotia, Canada

Kelly Hadfield, organiser of Gig for Ghana and founder of Friends of Ghana NGO, spoke about why she believes this organisation is so important “Minimising preventable deaths is what angers me the most and they are occurring every day in this region. This whole programme is about empowering locals to stop as many preventable deaths as possible. Right now, the healthcare workers who are the backbone of the service, the rural nurses at a pre-hospital community level, have zero training for basic resuscitation skills or for managing trauma. And this is where the Friends of Ghana can help”.

Kellly is the niece of Commander Hadfield and set up Ghana Medical Health after she travelled in the region with a non-governmental organisation on a global health programme. She is currently a student in the graduate entry medical school in UL.

All funds raised through Gig for Ghana 2017 will go directly to supporting Friends of Ghana NGO, the medical project in Ghana that empowers hundreds of rural and remote nurses to save lives and improve health outcomes for the most vulnerable. This partnership helps to develop an emergency medicine training program, involving a 4-day training conference in June 2017 that ‘trains the trainers’. The underlying principle is that nurses will be able to recognise and treat life-threatening emergencies across many causes, based on a model of ‘big sick’ / versus ‘little sick’.

Tickets for Gig for Ghana 2017 are €25 and are available at Steamboat Music, Steamboat Quay, Limerick, phone: 061 311696, Peter Dee Academy of Music, Limerick, phone: 061 310028.

For more stories on the previous Gig for Ghana events click here

For more on Friends of Ghana click here

Richard is a presenter, producer, songwriter and actor. He was named the Limerick Person of the Year (2011) and won an online award at the Metro Éireann Media and Multicultural Awards (2011) for promoting multi-culturalism online. Richard says that the ilovelimerick.com concept is very much a community driven project that aims to document life in Limerick. So, that in 20 years time people can look back and remember the events that were making the headlines.