#HealthScapades #12 | Public Health: The Melting Point | 05.09.2024
by Tayo Fasuan
A few years ago, I decided to drop many of the works I was doing to focus on just a few. My sojourns, from my undergraduate days in Ado-Ekiti, to Anambra during my NYSC, to my brief stay in Lagos and finally to Ibadan, have made me a sort of Jack of all trades. I had been an MC, DJ, photographer, videographer, video editor, science teacher, web designer, freelance writer/editor, fashion designer, agricpreneur and molecular scientist.
But as expected, as I got older, more zealous and more experienced, I had to focus and specialise in a few of these areas and drop most of them.
In recent years, I met more experts, and my horizon broadened. Health financing experts such as the Ekiti Honourable Commissioner for Health, Dr. Oyebanji Filani; Youth health advocates such as Tolulope Adewemimo; infectious disease physicians like Dr. Olumuyiwa Ariyo; and tonnes of others.
This has aided my public health specialisation, as I bring the knowledge and skills that I possess together while bravely learning new ones. My present abilities as a virologist, molecular scientist, infectious disease communicator, and disease surveillance volunteer have been melted together in order to create unique solutions to public health issues in my community.
Has this helped improve public health around me so far? I guess it has. My impact has been limited so far, or I can’t seem to know where I fit in. But this doesn’t deter me wherever I find myself. I keep contributing my parts. No one can do it alone. We need others to do their own parts. A multisectoral approach is still the best in addressing issues in public health.
Professionals in health and health-related fields need to find their own spaces to thrive while needing one another to succeed. In the end, public health is the melting point for all of us—doctors, nurses, medical laboratory scientists, scientific officers, community health workers, and even communicators. We should merge our various skills and abilities, and knowledge together for the betterment of ourselves and those around us.