Doctor enlists help of actor in funding medical village

Dr. Kwadwo Gyarteng-Dakwa helps patients manage their chronic pain in his four clinics.

He hopes one day to provide the citizens of his native Ghana the same type of specialized care — and he’s enlisting celebrity help to do so.

Gyarteng-Dakwa visited with actor John Amos in his Greensboro clinic Friday. The two men were introduced by a mutual friend.

Amos is a well-known actor who has starred in various roles. He played James Evans, head of the Evans clan on the hit 1970s comedy “Good Times” and Kunta Kinte in the “Roots” saga, based on the life of author Alex Haley’s enslaved ancestor.

But Friday’s visit was not about comedy and drama. Gyarteng-Dakwa is a native of Ghana and owns the HEAG (Health and Education Access for Ghana) Pain Management Center, which has offices in Greensboro, Archdale, Durham and Greenville.

He’s trying to establish a medical village in Ghana, a country in West Africa, to increase the access to health care for its citizens.

And it would be a village in the true sense of the word. He envisions a medical center where patients are treated, a school where professionals are trained and a hotel where people who travel to receive treatment can stay.

“We want to create a community that will be strong enough to sustain the whole project,” Gyarteng-Dakwa said Friday at his office on Pomona Drive.

Gyarteng-Dakwa, whose specialties are anesthesiology and pain management, said the project is in its initial stage.

He’s identified more than 20 acres of “free and clear” land his project could use to build the village. It’s located in a suburb of Accra, Ghana’s capital and largest city.

And he said the project will cost “a lot” of money.

Enter Amos and other people he hopes will collaborate with him on the project. Gyarteng-Dakwa said he and others involved with it are talking to investors as well as reaching out to financial institutions.

Amos came Friday to meet Gyarteng-Dakwa and learn more about the medical village. The first thing he did upon arriving was take a quick tour of the clinic.

“So far, every room you’ve shown me I could have used at one point or another,” Amos joked during the tour.