Veteran actor William Addo needs GHC5,000 for eye surgery

Veteran actor, William Addo may lose his sight if he is unable to raise GHC 5,000 for a surgery on the eye.

Sounding sorrowful on Hitz FM’s Daybreak Hitz on Wednesday, the sixty-six-year-old said he has been diagnosed of glaucoma and fears he will go blind should he fail to raise the said amount.

“I have to do a surgery on my eye. My vision is very blur. Doctors diagnosed that it is a combination of glaucoma and cataract and I need to be operated upon otherwise it’s going to cause a fracture,” he told host, KMJ.

According to Mr Addo, he has sent letters to some institutions but has not heard any positive response from those quarters. He however, mentioned that Kwame Sefa Kayi has given him an amount but will not disclose how much since he does not have the broadcaster’s permission to.

“So far, it’s only Kwame Sefa Kayi who has given me something… I have sent copies of the appeal to Cultural Forum, Ghana Actors Guild, Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Creative Arts and others but I’m yet to hear from them. That was before the advent of Easter,” he said.

Asked about how he feels having hit by such a situation, coupled with the not-so-positive response, Mr Addo’s reply was full of regrets.

“It’s unfortunate. I have served this country faithfully. I was at the School of Performing Arts, we had a scholarship to go abroad for training. Out of ten, only two of us came back because I thought I owed my country a lot. Sometimes, I ask if I made the correct decision. I’m a pensioner who took GHC 3,000 as end of service benefit after serving for thirty years. Sometimes I wonder whether we are living in a country taking notice of your contribution” he noted.

William Addo before appearing in a number of Ghanaian movies was a stage actor. He studied at the University of Ghana’s School of Performing Arts and was retained as a teaching assistant at the school after he graduated.

He later had a scholarship to do his masters abroad and came back as a lecturer in charge of acting at the institution. After some time, he was sent to the National Theatre where he was in charge of concert party productions.