Readers Perspectives: Health Interactive Column @ 11years

In the past there is always a GSM number on your page which allows readers to send questions. Of recent, the number has been removed. What happened?Kelechi B.Kelechi, yes it is true that the GSM number was removed recently. This was as a result of a formal email that I got from Medical and Dental […]

In the past there is always a GSM number on your page which allows readers to send questions. Of recent, the number has been removed. What happened?
Kelechi B.
Kelechi, yes it is true that the GSM number was removed recently. This was as a result of a formal email that I got from Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria, our regulatory body that registers all medical doctors and also ensures compliance of ethics in our work.  I was made to understand that putting the number was tantamount to ‘self advertisement’ which was against our code of conduct and ethics. As a law-abiding doctor I complied and removed the number.

How do you cope with professional colleagues?
Your doggedness impress me a lot and equally your innovativeness. You write a twin column of Health Interactive and Public Health Diary and no one has such record not only in Daily Trust but in Nigeria as a whole.  You are a pacesetter and an achiever. Do you experience insults, envy and criticism from other colleagues of yours and how do you cope with that?
Dr Barnabas S.

Dr Barnabas, I thank you a lot for your kind words and I remain humble in this service to humanity. Writing for 11 years has surely moulded me to be more tolerant to criticism and different views from mine. It is true sometime I get scurrilous and abusive comments via email or GSM or at times face to face for those who can not hide their venom. I read and hear what they have to say, sometime I offer explanation and at times I just laugh and secretly nurse my wounds and move on. I am always consoled that majority appreciate and value the work.

Who is Aminu Magashi?
Can you tell your readers who really is Aminu? You are an amazing person that everyone likes to interact with and meet. Please what do you do? Your qualification? Your age and anything of interest that you can tell us?
Yunusa L.
Yunusa, you make me laugh. I am not sure I am liked by everyone. Some are after my jugular vein. There is nothing out of the ordinary about me; I graduated from University of Maiduguri in 2001 with an MBBS and obtained a post graduate diploma and MSc Public Health from London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in 2006/7.  I am currently working in a DFID funded health project in Nigeria ‘Evidence for Action in Maternal and Child Health (E4A) as its regional coordinator in the north. I marked a very quiet 40th year birthday anniversary on the 17th October. I am married for about 12 years now and blessed with 2 kids (10 and 8 years old). I am also the coordinator for the last 3 years of a 7 month online post graduate diploma in Nigeria in Research Methodology being implemented by Geneva Foundation for Medical Education and Research, a World Health Organization Collaborating Center.  Of recent I am directly involved in establishing a network ‘Africa Health Budget Advocacy Network’. I get my hands full in many voluntary works in my personal time. You can call me ‘nomadic’ as I travel a lot due to nature of my work.

Where and how do you write?  
Many of your readers are aware of your hectic and busy development work but yet you maintain a weekly innovative and read-by-all health column.  How do you achieve that?
Tolu B.
Tolu, thanks for being my reader.  Writing weekly on health is a commitment I made to myself to do irrespective of where I found myself. There is a gap with respect to health advocacy and information and I felt our weekly column should support in shortening that gap. I am the nomadic type, never in one place for 2 weeks, so I write anywhere I find myself. No definitive time, I write normally weekends, early morning, late night or in the afternoon as the case may be. I have records of writing in motor parks, airports, in transit during journey as well as accident sites and on my sick bed.