I had the profound honor of leading the JSI Nigeria country team in welcoming Margaret Crotty , our president and CEO on a four-day (12th – 15th August) visit to Nigeria. Margaret’s visit was highly impactful and reinforced JSI’s unwavering commitment to improving lives and promoting public health in Nigeria. Her visit came at a crucial point in JSI Nigeria’s evolution, being the first JSI country office to implement the new country leadership model – an approach that is fostering our synergy, harnessing our expertise and ensuring that we are better positioned to deliver excellent public health interventions with superior outcomes.
As the pioneer Country Director spearheading this leadership model in Nigeria, I am proud of the exceptional talent, expertise, coordination, and commitment of the Nigeria country team and how these were deployed in ensuring the success of our CEO’s visit.
While in Nigeria, Margaret engaged with the Coordinating Minister of Health & Social Welfare, the Executive Governors of Edo and Jigawa states, and several partners that have been crucial to our success in Nigeria – #PEPFAR, #usaid, government ministries, and agencies, implementing partners, among others. The discussions during these engagements (including our contributions to ending the ongoing #Mpox outbreak) further affirmed JSI’s critical role in ensuring better health outcomes for all Nigerians.
Margaret’s visit ended with an open house with the JSI Nigeria staff. This event witnessed the display of our teams’ exceptional skill and expertise across various intervention areas, including health commodity market shaping, supply chain, digital health, new vaccine introduction and primary healthcare. The event was a testament to JSI's deep-rooted expertise and collaborative approach, which has driven success for many years.
On behalf of JSI Nigeria, I extend our immense gratitude to Margaret for taking the time out of her busy schedule to make this momentous visit. This is a testament to her passion, love, commitment, and dedication to the success of JSI. We assure her of our commitment to harnessing the gains of her visit and advancing JSI Nigeria into a more formidable force.
I appreciate the incredible support from the JSI team whose contributions and efforts were crucial to the success of Margaret’s visit – the JSI Nigeria SMT [Amos Bassi Miranda Buba Abiodun Hassan Yakubu Cherima Daniel Yerima, and our global office team Muka Chikuba-McLeod Kate Onyejekwe Grace Gabala , Timothy La Rose Jonathan Rucks Anneka Claudio working alongside the Nigeria planning team Arome Shaibu (MVPH) Dafe Victor Khadijah A. Ibrahim-Nuhu Ijeoma Okechukwu @dr okpsen Bassey.
To our partners (donors, government and implementing partners), thank you for your trust in our work. We hope to continue to collaborate with you and harness more opportunities towards the advancement of public health in Nigeria.
