I am a young man of 49, a Public Health Physician working with a parastatal of the Federal Ministry of Health in Abuja, Nigeria. I have had all my education in Nigeria and also all my work experience has been in Nigeria. Following my graduation from...More
I am a young man of 49, a Public Health Physician working with a parastatal of the Federal Ministry of Health in Abuja, Nigeria. I have had all my education in Nigeria and also all my work experience has been in Nigeria. Following my graduation from the Medical school I have had experience working with both the public and private sector in Nigeria and have equally worked in both urban and rural settings. I have also worked for several years trying to build a career in Laboratory Medicine, Medical Microbiology, to be specific, at the National Hospital Abuja.I worked in that field for about six years but was mostly engaged in the management of HIV/AIDS at the Special Treatment Clinic of the Hospital. However, my interest in Public Health saw me make a change in career when I saw an opening for my present position at the National Primary Health Care Development Agency, Abuja Nigeria. On joining the National Primary Health Care Development Agency I was posted to the Department of Community Health Services where I had the opportunity implementing health programmes at the community level. Most of the programmes at that level were in the areas of Maternal, Newborn, and Child Health, family planning, childhood nutrition, community mental health, oral health and hygiene, water and sanitation. I was also regularly involved in monitoring and supervsion of immunization activities and the planning, implementation, monitoring, and supervision of the bi-annual Maternal, Newborn, and Child Health Week (MNCH Week). The MNCH Week is a biannual event that was aimed at increasing the coverage of children under-five with evidence-based cost-effective life-saving interventions such as Vitamin A supplementation, routine immunization, deworming tablets, Long-lasting insecticide treated nets, and others. While in the Department of Community Health services I had the opportunity of working closely with several Development and Implementing partners with whom we have remained closely connected in the public health community. Following a minor reshufflement of personnel in the Agency I was posted to the Department of Planning, Research, and Statistics, Monitoring and Evaluation Division Division. This was to introduce me to a completely new area of Public Health Practice: Data Management. I have had quite a very interesting time while in this Department even though I have mostly had to learn on the job. I inherited the management of the DHIS2 Routine Immunization Module Implementation project. This entailed training the haelth workers in all the Primary Health Care facilities in the country to start reporting Routine Immunization data on the DHIS2 Dashboard. This initially appeared to be a daunting task, especially given the fact that we were given a time frame within which to conclude the task and there were a number of other serious programmes in the health sector competing for limited time and use of the same workforce. As challenging as that mandate was we were able to pull through and conclude the training so that all the Primary Health Facilities in Nigeria offering Routine Immunization are presently reporting on DHIS2.
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.png "Samuel Chukwuemeka Obasi")
Learning, Knowledge and Human Development MOOC
New Directions in the Humanities
Christine Reading
Elizabeth Davis Jones
Helen Ninika
Carolina Danovaro
Rasheed Nurudeen
