My name is Oluwtayo Fasuan. I am from Ekiti State, Nigeria.
I am a public health and environmental virologist with a focus on important emerging and reemerging infectious diseases; a water sanitation and hygiene (WASH) expert with a focus on environmental water quality and water use behaviour, and; a science journalist and health communicator with expertise in risk communication and community engagement (RCCE) and health information, education, and communication (HIEC).
I am passionate about preventing vaccine-preventable diseases in vulnerable populations and rural communities, and controlling microbial hazards posed by waterborne viruses in surface waters. Over the years, I have been able to combine my skills, gathered over twenty years of experience, including 15-year experiences as certified journalist, to become a seasoned science journalist and health communicator.
I have skills and expertise in conducting interviews, carrying out presentation, multimedia (audiovisual) creation, recording and editing, graphic and web designing, creative writing and blogging, social media content development and management, On-Air Personality and talk show hosting, event organisation and coverage, report writing, technical writing and feature writing.
Although I can write for very vast and diverse fields, having started my career in journalism writing about politics, sports and lifestyle, I have entrenched myself into science and health writing since 2012 by creating a webzine, MicroBiotics, which has since become a science technical and communication firm in 2019. Most of my written articles are there, though I have been making more use of social media platforms to also curate stories in recent times.
I have written and edited articles that dealt with common health problems, such Human Papillomavirus as The Unseen Leading Cause of Cervical Cancer in Women; Genital Herpes in Pregnancy: A Case of Mother-to-Newborn Transmission; Protein-Fortified Garri: Improving Nutritional Quality of a Staple Food;
Anti-Sperm Antibodies as the Unsuspected Cause of Infertility; Viral Hepatitis: Types, Transmission and Control, and; Nine Reasons Why Drugs Don’t Work Against Diseases. These articles were written to positively influence the readers and general public concerning practices related to the subject matters.
I have also written articles concerning national and international health crises, providing reports and sensitisation about diseases outbreaks and their management. They include: Five Unknown Facts That Make Ebola Virus Dangerously Elusive To Manage; COVID-19 and the Infectious Viral Load: Another Angle to Fighting the Infection; Infectious Diseases Outbreaks: The Need for Proactive Disease Approaches in Nigeria; Nosocomial Diseases: Tackling Hospital-Acquired Infections (HAIs) in Nigeria, and; Epidemic Preparedness: Technological innovations and future directions.
I delivered a TedX talk in 2021 immediately after COVID-19 pandemic, later producing an article from the talk, titled, Viral Diseases Control and Management: Exploring The Patient Impact. This detailed how we can engage the public in the fight against viral infections. Most of these articles, amongst many, were written to address specific issues that were prevalent nationally or internationally around those times.
Furthermore, as the technical aspect of MicroBiotics became pronounced, I wrote articles inviting other scientists to innovate and communicate more about their works. These articles include: Disease Management: The Frontiers Keep Expanding; Phytopharmacology: Blending Traditional Knowledge with Modern Techniques; Food Enhancement: Exploring Different Techniques to Improve Food Quality, and; Crop Improvements: Taking the Holistic Approach. This has also allowed me to work and partner with many other brilliant scientists in their fields, encouraging them as well to partcipate in science communications.
As someone running a firm that is into technical science and health practices as well, I have curated articles for products and services of individuals as well as corporate organisations. This has allowed me to go into copywriting as well, producing articles that showcase the benefits of those products and services while also providing a platform for easy transactions. Examples of these include: Cervical Cancer Screening, DNA Parentage Testing, and Viral Diagnostic Tests. I have also written ebooks related to my technical works in the field of Virology, such as A Handbook on Wild Birds Associated with Arboviral Diseases and Other Than Malaria: Common Viral Diseases Transmitted by Mosquitoes in Africa.
In late 2021 and early 2022, I diversified into broadcast/podcast journalism. So far, I have produced more than 70 videos, under the name BioTalks, targeted at providing the audience with an alternative to reading health-focused articles. All these videos can be found on my firm’s YouTube channel. The most popular among these talks were Maternal, Infant and Young Child Nutrition Training; Symptoms, Diagnosis & Treatment of Severe Malnutrition; Introduction to Infection Prevention and Control, Differential Diagnosis & Complications and Management of Marasmus, and; An Overview of Public Health Emergency Operations Centre (PHEOC) BioTalks currently have two different subthemes – Shey You Dey Whine Me Ni (for addressing misinformation and disinformation about health and biosciences) and Spotlight (for creating awareness for bioscience-based and health programmes and organisations).
In 2023, I ventured more into more distinct content creation on social media, creating alongside BioTalk, programmes such EventRep and HealthScapades, featuring more on LinkedIn and Facebook. EventRep, just like the name, focuses on reporting health-based events using pictures and captions only, and these reports can be found on the webpage, with coverage and reporting of events such as World Malaria Day 2023 (Facebook | LinkedIn), Outbreak Response (OBR1) against circulating Mutant Polio Virus Type-2 (cMPV2) transmission in Ondo State – (LinkedIn) and The 14th African Rotavirus Symposium 2023 (Facebook | LinkedIn).
HealthScapades are real life stories of my adventure as a public health practitioner and consultant, written weekly since the middle of 2024, and presently in its 39th episode. The HealthScapade episodes with the most impression (on LinkedIn) are Ade The Snitch! (The Community Informant Issue), and Ekiti Molecular Laboratory: Let’s Wake Up The Sleeping Giant. In recent episodes, humour has been added to make the posts more interesting and relatable, while still maintaining its core mandate of providing useful health-based information for the public. Other episodes include: Who Is This Community Mobiliser, DAMA, the Damaging; DAMA, the Dangerous, Oh Penta, Where Are You?, and Village Life, Village Problems. More episodes can be found here.
Furthermore, with a Master’s degree in Virology and a PhD in Environmental Microbiology, in addition to a Postgraduate Diploma in Journalism, I have also published articles in peer-reviewed journals, delving into academic writings as well. These include:
- Evaluation of physicochemical water-quality indices of two surface water canals in Ado-Ekiti, Ekiti State, Nigeria;
- Investigation of the water-use behaviours of households in proximity to water canals in Ado-Ekiti, Nigeria;
- Comparison of the Effectiveness of Alum, Chlorine, Sodium Hypochlorite and Moringa’s Seeds in Reducing Bacterial Loads in the Treatment of Restaurant Wastewater;
- Attempted Detection of West Nile Virus from Wild and Peridomestic Birds within Ibadan Metropolis in Nigeria; and,
- Molecular Surveillance of Common Peridomestic Wild Birds as Potential Hosts for Selected Zoonotic Viruses within Ibadan, Nigeria