Dr Uwem Essiet, Founder, Action Health Incorporated Why do you prefer running an NGO to practising medicine There was a beautiful coincidence.
After I left the university in 1983, I came back to Lagos and got involved in private medical practice. Having worked for a while in two hospitals, I wanted to establish my own clinic, but I wanted to bring in something different from what others had. It was clear to me that I could go into family planning, and in the course of looking for how to make this happen, I went to the Planned Parenthood Federation of Nigeria. As I got there that day, I was privileged to meet a very wonderful nurse called Mrs Odugbemi. She looked at me and started advising me, asking me why I had to buy family planning materials instead of participating in courses run for nurses and doctors at their headquarters there. She said many times, doctors didn&euro&tildet come and the classes were mainly full of nurses. So what did you do How So what you are saying is that you originally did not have the intention of bringing in your wife What are the major efforts you have made
There are several efforts, but I will tell you a few. Nigeria today has a potentially robust response to HIV/AIDS in the education sector. Without sounding immodest, that story cannot be complete without recognising the roles this organisation has played. First, we started with the issue of sexuality education and when there was going to be a national consensus to call it Family Life HIV Education, we were in the driver&euro&tildes seat along with government. In junior public secondary schools in Lagos State, over 350,000 young people have access to life enhancing scheme-based HIV/AIDS awareness education. Now, the thing has gone beyond Lagos State it has gone national. Before then, in 1999, Action Health Incorporated collaborated with the Federal Ministry of Health to organise the first National Conference on Adolescent Reproductive Health in Abuja. In the year 2009, we are also collaborating with the ministry to assess the national response to young people&euro&tildes sexual and reproductive health in Nigeria. We believe that the findings of that collaboration will be nationally disseminated at a meeting to be chaired by the minister of health sometimes in June.