Rugby Africa President and former Chairman of Asante Kotoko Sporting Club, Herbert Mensah, on May 9, 2024 kept alive his tradition of leading mass marches through the principal streets of Kumasi and Accra, to remind all that football, like any sport, can do without violence and the needless loss of life and limbs.
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The occasion was the 23rd anniversary of the May 9, 2001 Stadium Disaster that saw about 126 football fans perish following crowd violence and poor crowd control by security forces at the Accra Stadium 2024 after a Hearts of Oak and Kotoko league game.
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The 2024 anniversary, marked in Kumasi, was attended by people from all walks of life, including families of victims, keep-fit clubs, survivors of hole-in-heart disease, and members of the physically disabled.
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Following the disaster, Herbert Mensah has founded a charity organisation - the May 9 Foundation –to offer support for families and victims of the Stadium Disaster.
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The May 9 Foundation recently partnered with the Shen Yang and Shen Yuet Children's Heart Foundation to assist families whose children suffer from hole-in-heart disease to access expensive surgical operations, which these families otherwise could not afford.
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The Heart Foundation is founded by Y.C. Shen, the Chinese business Mogul operating in Ghana as head of the SUNDA group.
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Speaking of the transitional progress made by the May 9 Foundation over the years, Herbert Mensah told Ghanaians, "In the last year, we have teamed up with the Shen Yang Children's Heart Foundation of which I am the secretary, and whose founder, Y.C. Shen, an extraordinary man from China, has invested so much in the heart surgeries of more than 25 children at the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital under the guidance of Dr. Kow Entsua Mensah of the National Cardiothoracic Centre in Accra, and in the process, we have saved the lives of many children, although some could not make it."
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After the street walk, Herbert Mensah led some of the families and their children who had successfully recovered from the hole-in-heart surgeries to call on the Asantehene, Otumfuo Osei Tutu II, who is the life patron of Asante Kotoko, and who is currently celebrating 25 years as King of the Asante Kingdom.
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