Revered Father Andrew Campbell, an Irish SVD missionary now Rev. Dr. Fr Andrew Campbell since the University of Health and Allied Sciences (UHAS), Ho, has conferred an Honorary Doctorate on Rev. Father Andrew Campbell, Parish Priest of Christ the King Parish, Accra.The award is in recognition of Father Campbell’s decades of humanitarian service and his dedication to health and development in Ghana, especially in the field of Leprosy control and management... in a nutshell brings joy to Ghana's lepers.
Father Campbell arrived in Ghana on October 13, 1971 after having left Liverpool in MV Orion on October 1 that same year.
He was born in Dublin, Ireland, on March 27, 1946. He attended kindergarten at Sisters of Charity School and de la Salle Primary School, both in Ireland.
He studied Philosophy and Theology and through hard work and dedication, obtained his Bachelor of Divinity Degree from St. Patrick’s College in the United Kingdom on 20th October, 1970.
In December 1970, he was ordained into the Catholic priesthood.
During the long vacations, he worked in supermarkets filling shelves with food and sweeping floors. He also worked as a welder in a factory in London and worked as an auxiliary nurse at Walton Hospital in Liverpool.
However, after his ordination he volunteered to come to Ghana as a missionary priest. So on October 13, 1971 Father Campbell arrived in Ghana to work as Catholic Missionary Priest in The Society of the Divine Word.
According to him, his desire to help the poor and needy helped him to form Leper’s Aid Committee, a committee of Young People committed to assist the Cured Lepers by raising funds. Father is also a founding member and Co-chairman of Environmental Protection Association (EPA), West Arena, Accra, an NGO founded to help people become aware of their responsibility to keep their surroundings clean.
His public displays of solidarity are about rehabilitating Ghana’s lepers and breaking down the prejudice that makes outcasts of them. Ghana has about 10,000 cured and about 2,500 active lepers. Those who are active are on drugs to halt the disease’s ravages. Those who are cured cannot infect others but, on account of their scars, are still stigmatised.
Fr Campbell first encountered with a leper was when a man came to the Holy Spirit Cathedral 46 years ago to sell mangoes. According to him, he was frightened and didn’t know how to react.
In the years that followed, Fr Andy began to take an active interest in the plight of these people, and he noticed how they were treated, even by medical staff at the hospitals.
However, Fr Campbell believes Ghana, through church initiatives and government-led policies, is now beginning to handle the plight of lepers in a more compassionate manner. He actively champions the rights of lepers within his own parish, often inviting them to services where they are given the place of honour.
As a result of his lobbying, a number of government ministers and philanthropists have lent their public support to his work.
Fr Andy believes that some improvement can be made in the state subsidy to lepers and that charitable donations and fundraising have to play a part too.
“I’m called ‘the leper priest’ and have been told I’m a perpetual beggar!”
With the money he raises, Fr Andy has got a number of initiatives aimed at giving lepers a skill in order to help them make some money for themselves.
His organisation has set up a mill in the leprosarium in Accra and in about four other places in Ghana, where the men and women get paid for grinding corn. Other projects include a soap-making venture, mat-making, a poultry farm, in addition to dress-making for those who still have functioning fingers.
Father Andrew Campbell's App
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