Joachim Ibeziako Ezeji; courageously building the future with action and vision

Joachim Ibeziako Ezeji is the Chief Executive Officer of Rural Africa Water Development Project (RAWDP), and a member of many professional organizations including the Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management (CIWEM) UK. His research interests are related to institutional and community water governance, drinking water quality and urban poverty in developing countries of Africa. He was coordinator of a World Bank -funded development project ‘Mor-sand filter for oil producing communities’ that aims to assist households in oil producing communities to maximize the quality of their drinking water supply and free them from the burdens of ill-health caused by human and industrial pollution. (www.mor-sandfilter.org).

This project provided the background for a new project “Project 78 for 78,000 filters in 2012”; a nexus that seeks to set up 78 local filter factories, each to be headed by 1 of the trained 78 youths now working as ‘Clean Water artisans’. Each filter factory will accordingly be supported to manufacture 1000 filters by the end of the project year in 2012; by so doing, the project aims to produce 78,000 filters for 78,000 households serving well over 624,000 people in 78 dispersed communities. The project is optimizing relevant tools and approaches in community participation to engage the communities, promote household hygiene and achieve sustainability in filter use and efficient adoption.

Joachim currently holds an MSc in Water and Environmental Management which he earned from the Water, Engineering and Development Centre (WEDC), Loughborough University in 2007.Earlier he had obtained a Bachelor of science in Geology from the University of Calabar, Nigeria. He has broad interest and work experience in Governance and Capacity Building Issues in the context of the water, sanitation and urban slum upgrading targets; and the World Bank Poverty Reduction Strategy Processes – PRSP; and Sustainable Water Management Systems and Diffuse Pollution Management.

Top amongst Joachim’s current research work is how to effectively maximize the Barrier impacts of sanitation systems on diarrhea through source separation of urine and flush water in order to protect drinking water sources and safeguard public health in Nigeria.

Contributed by:

Mr. Agbai Odionyema

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AMREF UN Press Release

AMREF CALLS FOR HEALTH CARE WORKFORCE PLANS IN AFRICA, CITES LACK OF DOCTORS, FACILITIES

AMREF applauds UN Commitment to Achieving Millennium Development Goals by 2015, but stresses need for additional resources and training

 

NEW YORK, NY - Insufficient numbers of doctors and nurses, lack of training and strained resources are just some of the challenges facing the health care system in Africa. Today, as the United Nations convenes to discuss the progress of the Millennium Development Goals, African Medical and Research Foundation (AMREF) Director Lisa Meadowcroft commented on the progress that has been made and the challenges that lay ahead, stating:

“The UN’s Millennium Development Goals are an important catalyst for reducing global poverty and disease. While the last eight years have seen some progress in improving the health care infrastructure in Africa, there is still much work to be done.

“In many parts of Africa, lack of training and treatment facilities remain the greatest challenge to improving care. In Southern Sudan, there are only 100 doctors and 600 nurses for a population of more than eight million people. Read more

A Nigerian NGO and its good works. (Part 3)

With the vastness of the Niger Delta — 187 local government areas, more than 40 different ethnic groups and 250 languages and dialects among them, about 28 million peoples, 12 per cent of Nigeria’s surface area, 13,329 settlements, with only 98 being urban centres, long coastlines and environments that are devastated; you will no doubt agree with RAWDP that to accomplish its mission is a huge challenge.

RAWDP is presently working in only 7 communities out of over 5,000 located in only 7 local government areas out of 187. This is really not enough hence underscoring the imperativeness of training and empowering the trainees and the communities to expand the water filter production within a record time.

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Rethinking the Clean-up Exercise in Nigeria

The practice of designating one day in a month as a general clean – up day has assumed the status of a culture in this country. It is the day we try to do all the cleaning we failed to do in the past one month. On such a day all the rubbish that was dumped inside the drains are scooped out to make room for the ones we plan to deposit there right after the clean-up exercise. All the obscure corners of markets and open places that have served as dump sites are emptied out. On such clean-up days, the roads and streets are blocked with refuse from all nooks and crannies of the city. The original concept is that pay-loaders and refuse trucks will be handy to cart away the refuse as they are being generated. What is on ground however, owing to the endemic corruption in the system is that adequate arrangement for the carting away of refuse is not made before announcing a clean-up day. The result is that the state of the city on clean-up days and many days and even weeks after is indeed a sorry sight.

The problem of rapid generation of refuse is one of the evils of urbanization. The rural communities manage their refuse much better than the urban areas. The reason is simply that the population in such places grows naturally, mainly through birth. They can afford to manage refuse in the same way their forebears managed theirs because the population is stable. Urbanization is characterized by the massive influx of people into an area that is already saturated with inhabitants. This astronomical and abnormal increase in the number of people living in a place affects every aspect of life. Advanced nations of the world are so called because they factor these evils of urbanization into their plans for their cities. They plan these cities to make them truly habitable. Read more

RE:Borno State Govt Recruits 30 Egyptian Doctors

Instead of the usual comment, one our top notch commentators decided to write this long epistle when he wants given prominence.

As much as he was full of praises for the efforts of the Borno State government, he still wishes that more needs to be done to restore the past glories of our health system; furthermore, that our medical professionals are equal to the task. The only need to be motivated and we renumerated.

Hear him;

The Crisis of our Nation’s health system saddens me. I speak authoritatively on issues of health in our beloved Nigeria and as someone who has accessed the best their is that our professional Doctors, Nurses and health personnel could offer.
 
I was once admitted to Adeoyo General Hospital in Ibadan suffering from an infection of Tetanus or ‘Lock Jaw’ as my doctors would call it at the time. That I received the best treatment money could buy anywhere in the world is not in doubt. The professionalism of medical staffs and their caring was top notch.
 
I ask myself what has gone wrong from the hey days of the ’80s to our current medical status? Why can’t we just invest into our health system? Why can’t we work to eradicate preventable deaths in our hospitals up and down the country?
 
On the plus side, I commend the efforts of the Borno State government but we have got to invest more into our own, Nigerian health professionals…. JO

We do share your sentiments and look forward to better days ahead.

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Borno State Govt Recruits 30 Egyptian Doctors

According to THISDAY;

Borno State government has recruited about 30 medical doctors and experts from Egypt, to take charge of the newly commissioned Umaru Shehu ultra-modern hospital, Maiduguri. Nigerian doctors based outside the country are also appointed. The state government  also directed all its 27 local government areas  to recruit at least one medical doctor and two nurses, for each of the comprehensive health centres  at all the local government areas of the state.

I was just wondering the rational behind the decision and it really beats me. Read carefully the words in italic to show you that the Nigerians employed were just to make it up.

In the characteristic Nigerian way, I hope federal character was applied in the employement if not I hope there are subsisting labor rules that makes it imperative as obtains here in the UK that no UK or European citizen is qualified to hold such position before giving it to a foreigner.

To the best of my abilities, Nigeria ‘harvest’ more medical doctors than any other country in Africa to an extension the world. Talking about well trained, Nigerian trained doctors have proven themselves outside the shores of Nigeria. We are not talking about application of attendant technologies in medicine.

I think it is high time the North rid itself of this imperialist thinking that have perpertually under-developed it and hindered the overall development of Nigeria.

This brings me to this clip below. Does it really mean this policy of the 60’s by the North still exist in today Nigeria?

What do you think?

Please see this clip and have your say too; Remind us if you can who the first speaker on the clip was in 1964? ** Clip is not about FELA**

 

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