DRASA ADMIN

DRASA ADMIN

  • Joined: October 16, 2025
  • Articles: 210

Making People Part of the Process: Strengthening Cross-Border Collaborations for Health Security Through Community Involvement

“Go to the people. Live with them. Learn from them. Love them. Start with what they know. Build with what they have. …When the work is done, the task accomplished, the people will say ‘We have done this ourselves.” –Lao Tzu Imagine if it was possible for all travelers moving from one country to another to pass freely through their borders. How would we quickly identify and contain sick people, animals, infected cargo and products as they cross through these entry points? One easy way to ensure this is to work with the people residing in border communities. When they are educated and equipped, they become health champions who are aware of the signs and symptoms of infectious diseases and can identify them, prevent their spread, as well as notify the necessary public health authorities for further management and action. This will stop the spread of infections within and across communities around the country. Community influencers at one of Nigeria’s land borders As part of our ongoing health security activities, we identified key groups of local leaders and influencers in 6 border communities namely;  Jibia (Katsina), Kamba (Kebbi), Illela (Sokoto), Maigatari (Jigawa), Idiroko (Ogun) and Seme Border (Lagos), who we worked with to help identify, prevent and manage disease outbreaks in the communities. We actively engaged with some of these community influencers through our advocacy visits and they assured us of their support and commitment to helping secure the country’s health. Our team identified more than 17,600 stakeholders, including religious leaders, market union heads, road transport workers and officials, Miyetti Allah, staff of primary health centres and general hospitals, health educators and community volunteers, among others. Of the various categories of people, market unions, road transport workers, and hospitals constituted a large number of the stakeholders identified. Community stakeholders at 3 […]

Art Meets Health as DRASA Ambassadors Create Supergerm Comic Illustrations

Arts Meets Health, As DRASA Ambassadors Create Supergerms in Comic Illustrations “The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.” – Aristotle As part of our learning methods for the Health and Hygiene Clubs we established in 30 secondary schools in Osun and Lagos States, 900 DRASA Ambassadors— i.e, student members of the club—were recently put into groups to come up with creative ways to represent the concept of supergerms. These supergerms are microorganisms which have become resistant to the antimicrobial drugs (antimalarials, antibiotics, etc) that would normally kill them. The phenomenon of these microorganisms adapting to become immune to the drugs we have to kill them is called antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and it’s been called the “silent pandemic” spreading around the world. DRASA Ambassadors creating their supergerm characters – resistant bacteria, viruses, fungi, and parasites Prior to this activity, our Ambassadors were taught lessons on germ theory, how germs spread,  personal hygiene principles, handwashing, Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) in humans and animals, sexual and reproductive health and sexually transmitted infections, to mention a few. Understanding these topics was vital for the much-anticipated comic illustration activity. The creative process for the supergerm comic illustrations The comic illustration is one of the many hands-on activities designed by our project team to provide these young Ambassadors with opportunities to be creative, express their visual intelligence, share important health messages, and grasp the concept of AMR, personal health & hygiene and environmental health, with little or no words. In the past, some of these group activities helped inspire previous Ambassadors like Glorious Erhuanga in her journey to becoming an English and Literary student major at University of Lagos. DRASA Ambassadors in action To properly demonstrate their understanding of AMR, students were put together in groups during their Health and Hygiene Club […]

Reflections from 2021: Our Journey and Impact So Far

Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success. –Edward Everett Hale For us at DRASA, the first half of the year provides us an opportunity to review how close we are to our goals, while paying attention to how far we have come. While we keep working to bring new ideas to life and scale our commitment to protecting public health in 2022, we have also taken time to reflect on our achievements in the past year and the immense value we have added to the lives of Nigerians through the support and partnerships we have formed with people like you. We do not intend to keep these successes to just ourselves so we have documented them in our Annual Report for 2021. 2021 At A GlanceWe worked relentlessly to execute projects, events and activities – across 10 states in Nigeria and 11 countries – that align with our mission. Our beneficiaries ranged from professionals in the health workforce to border officials, businesses, school children, community leaders, and nonprofits, among others. Read More in Our 2021 Annual Report The Journey Continues The end of one journey is always the beginning of another. As always, we keep working for the greater public good. So far in 2022, we have scaled our school health program to develop 900 students in 30 schools in Lagos and Osun states into health champions. Student Ambassadors during the DRASA Health and Hygiene Club meeting in their school Student Ambassadors during the DRASA Health and Hygiene Club meeting in their school We are also ensuring the public health emergency contingency systems developed at 13 entry points are functional, including some vital ground crossings in northwestern Nigeria. To do so, we are engaging key groups in border communities between Nigeria and our neighbors: Niger […]

Gone, But Not Forgotten: Dr. Ameyo Stella Adadevoh Receives First National Posthumous Award

The song is ended but the melody lingers on. – Irving Berlin Dr. Ameyo Stella Adadevoh (DRASA) was conferred the National Productivity Order of Merit (NPOM) Posthumous Award by His Excellency, President Muhammadu Buhari (GCFR), at the 19th National Productivity Day Celebration which held on Thursday, the 12th day of May 2022 at the Banquet Hall of the Presidential Villa, Abuja. Dr. Adadevoh was the courageous heroine, whose efforts and those of her colleagues, saved millions of citizens from contracting Ebola in 2014. Seven years after, her life, times, and commitment to the duty of saving lives, are modelled in the work we do at DRASA Health Trust in equipping Nigeria’s public health workforce and as well as other key stakeholders for the sole goal of protecting public health. Niniola Williams (DRASA Health Trust) and Prof Akin Abayomi (Honorable Commissioner of Health, Lagos State) The event, which was centered around the theme Achieving Higher Productivity through Improved Educational System, would be the first ever national merit award and first recognition by the nation since Dr. Adadevoh died in 2014. The keynote speech by Dr. Sylvester Momoh Onoja highlighted key messages on making our education sector functional and efficient while emphasizing its role as a strong determinant of national productivity. Since, national security is greatly dependent on health security and economic productivity, the keynote speech, in fact, resonates with our work in equipping young champions in schools as part of our commitments towards Nigeria’s national action plan for curbing antimicrobial resistance, a major health threat. Also in attendance were 48 other meritorious awardees, amongst whom were Dr. Chikwe Ihekweazu (Assistant Director General, World Health Organization), Prof Akin Abayomi (Commissioner of Health, Lagos State),  Dr. Obi Peter Adigwe (Director General, National Institute for Pharmaceutical Research and Development), and Boss Gidehyelda Mustapha (Secretary to the Government […]

“Keeping Patients Safe: It Starts With Your Hands”: Lessons From Our Twitter Space Conversations on World Hand Hygiene Day

“Hands are just a simple thing but our hands can change almost everything. Keep care safe and take a stand; clean care for everyone.” –It’s In Your Hands, a World Hand Hygiene Day theme song. As part of our activities to commemorate the 2022 World Hand Hygiene Day (WHHD), we collaborated with partners at the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), Centre for Infection Control and Patient Safety (CICaPS), Infection Control Africa Network (ICAN) and Nigerian Society for Infection Control (NSIC) to host a Twitter Spaces event, on the 4th of May, 2022. The conversation, which had more than 899 live listeners from Nigeria, Canada and the US among other locations, was initiated with the goal of engaging with the public on the importance of good hand hygiene practices for a safer delivery of care in our hospitals. World Hand Hygiene Day Twitter Spaces Participants Persistent infections, more visits to healthcare facilities, prolonged hospital admissions, and high costs of care are consequences of poor infection prevention and control methods in hospitals. According to the WHO, hand hygiene improvement programs can prevent up to 50% avoidable infections acquired during health care delivery and generate economic savings on average 16 times the cost of implementation. Health workers, just like patients and their relatives, are not left out. In fact, they face a high risk of inadvertently transmitting or even contracting an infection as they use their hands to do a lot of work in the caring and treatment process. From holding, to touching, grasping and lifting, their jobs require them to continually make contact with  sick patients, surfaces and equipment. As we use our hands everyday, we must clean them regularly with soap and water or alcohol-based sanitizers. Routine hand hygiene can prevent up to 1 million deaths a year and reduce up to 50% of avoidable infections […]