Welcome!

This welcome is belated, but it is better late than never.
I am a Change Agent. I want to see sustainable development especially as regards Health Systems in resource-constrained settings. This is my Creed: my chosen path in life. I seek for people with similar vision-those who are entirely sold out. It is a well known fact that you achieve more when there is a cross-fertilization of ideas; when resources are pooled together.
You cannot as yet acquaint yourself entirely with my person in this single post but I reproduce below an essay I submitted when applying for a Master's Program I have just been admitted into. This will give you a glimpse of me.
Please read.


The Master of Strategic Leadership towards Sustainability Program: My Statement of Interest.

I live in a region of the world termed “developing” . This classification appears to be a misnomer . Everywhere I turn I see stagnation , retrogression and at times , outright decay . There are just a few segments of our daily lives that we have noticed the similitude of progress-slow , painful progress .
I have a background in the health industry. Some of our health indices were better during the pre-independence era than what obtains now. We even have done more harm to ourselves than good during our development, so-called. Consider Nigeria, my country. Nigeria is a populous nation of about 150 million people. This country occupies a landmass of about 923,768 sq km. She is blessed with abundant natural resources but sadly ranks as one of the poorest nations of the world. The average Nigerian lives below the poverty line. Corruption, greed, years of military rule, unstable economic polity, lack of political will and poor planning are some of the reasons why Nigeria remains poor. The health sector is not spared. The health indices are poor. A 2003 estimate puts Nigeria's infant mortality rate at 71 per 1000 live births and life expectancy at 51 years. In 1993, there were 5,208 persons per doctor and for many years, less than 3% of the GDP was spent on health care. Infectious diseases remain a major problem and preventive measures are rudimentary, almost non-existent. Public health institutions are mere spectacles of what they should be: most are under-staffed; the out of stock syndrome is rampant; health workers embark on work to rule campaigns incessantly and many health centers are death traps. There is substantial evidence that things were not this way at the beginning. Our development is not sustained. We grapple with mediocre leadership.
This is the state of many countries in the developing world.
I have been accosted by many, even accused, that I hold a somewhat simplistic, parochial view about the solution to the development issues facing resource-constrained settings. I strongly believe that the solution lies in our hands. We have to allow for responsible leadership that will give Sustainability issues priority of place. Otherwise, we will still continue to reel in the quagmire of under-development. This has been the thrust of my pursuits for a long time.
Ideas of a sustained environment first formed in my mind when I volunteered to join a Self-Help group that embarked on tree planting and beautification of my secondary school. I was in secondary school and we had just had a rain storm that pulled down a good number of the trees in my school. A tutor spearheaded this project and I came to learn from him that an imbalance in the milieu of the things on earth often results in chaos and devastation.
While at the university, I joined a socio-philanthropic organization called Les Ami where we imbibed principles of social responsibility and became advocates of sustainable development especially as regards healthcare delivery. Through this organization, we were able to conduct awareness campaigns about our core values at different levels of the university and the host city. We got some of our funding from the WHO and some public-spirited individuals.
I have an undergraduate degree in Medicine and Surgery from Nigeria’s premier university. I am at the moment involved in postgraduate training in Family Medicine at the Evangel Hospital, Jos, Plateau State, Nigeria. Before commencing residency training, I worked with a number of health outfits. Out of these, the public health outfits provided the most satisfaction as they exposed me again to issues of inequity in health distribution, inefficient, inaccessible and dilapidating health systems. I was able to carry out community mobilization and health advocacy which most of the time focused on establishing small but efficient health systems that work for people living in resource-limited communities. Sustaining larger healthcare networks was a challenge.
The Grace and Harold Sewell Foundation recognized these efforts and issued a scholarship to enable me present two papers at the 133rd Annual Meeting of the American Public Health Association last year. The papers bordered on sustainable healthcare development in developing countries. We have authored several other documents for publication/presentation at other fora. Recently, we started addressing the issue of universal access to antiretroviral drugs which is not possible without sustainable supply. If the supply is constant, then, we can scale up all other aspects of HIV care.
I have always nursed the ambition of pursuing a postgraduate degree in public health. While applying to schools around the world, I stumbled on information about the masters program in Strategic Leadership towards Sustainability which began to shed light on a peculiar principle dubbed The Natural Step Framework. I instantly came to terms with the fact that this degree is what I have been looking for to enable me achieve all that I have set to do for my community. For now, I have put on hold the quest to study this broad categorization called public health and pursue initially (if admitted into the program) principles that will empower me to follow my passion-that of ensuring sustainable development especially as regards healthcare delivery.
As at now, I am filled with burning questions which I hope this masters program will enable me to answer. It is common knowledge that health systems do not exist in a vacuum. Disease results as a complex interplay of several factors. And good health is not just the absence of physical ailments-the person is viewed as whole. Thus, the relationship of health systems to other systems is pivotal. Considering the whole systems approach how does health systems relate to other systems? With the well-known demon of brain drain bedeviling developing countries, how do you train and retain manpower for sustainability? What alternatives are available to build human capacity? What is “community”? How do you mobilize community to take responsibility for sustainability? How do you foster social responsibility by the corporate community?
I want to learn from other would-be course participants about how they were able to carry out advocacy campaigns to convince policymakers to ensure that sustainable development is given priority. How do we manage scarce resources to allow for needed growth? How does widespread poverty impart on development? What methods are available to reduce poverty? I can go on.
The developing world is my constituency. My immediate community is my starting point. If I am admitted into this program, I intend to use whatever I learn to ensure sustainable development especially as it relates to sustainable health systems. I will become a better ambassador for this cause.

Ifeolu Joseph Falegan, MD.