Former Ghanaian sprinter, Rose Amankwaah is retiring from the National Health Service (NHS) in the United Kingdom after serving for almost five decades.
The 72-year-old represented Ghana at the 1972 Olympic Games and started working with the NHS three years later. She won a bronze medal for Ghana at the 1974 Commonwealth Games in New Zealand and was once described as the fastest woman in Africa.
At the age of 22, she relocated to England in 1974, and not long after, she began her nursing studies.
She began working for the hospital as a staff nurse after completing her training, and she ends her career as a theatre matron.
Throughout her whole medical career, Mrs. Amankwaah worked at Central Middlesex Hospital. In 2023, she was given the NHS Silver Medal Award by England’s chief nurse, Dame Ruth May.
“I’m happy that I’m going to have some time with my family but I have been in this hospital all my life, so retirement feels like losing something – you’re part of the furniture and all of a sudden you are not going to be.
“But I’m so happy that I have achieved what I want to achieve,” she said as quoted by the BBC.
Amankwaah started running in 1958 at the secondary school level and was adept in the 100m and 200m events.