On 24th January 2010, a new Executive Council was elected into office. I therefore took over the position of the chief servant of the association from Prof. William Ogala. The membership of the new Executive Council consists of:
Dr. Dorothy Esangbedo – President
Prof. Adebiyi Olowu – Vice President
Dr. Ekanem Ekure – Secretary
Dr. Ojo – Assistant Secretary
Dr. Mariya Mukhtar-Yola – Treasurer
Dr. Omogberale – Ex Officio
Prof. William Ogala – Immediate Past President
On behalf of my colleagues on the Executive Council, I wish to again express sincere gratitude to all members of the association for the confidence reposed in us to lead the affairs of the association. We will do all possible to build on the achievements of the association so far.
A profile of the association is now available to communicate our vision, mission and objectives with other stakeholders in child healthcare and the public. Advocacy on child healthcare matters will continue to be a strategy of intervention by the association. For this reason, PAN, as a major stakeholder in child healthcare matters, will be publishing position papers on various child health issues as technical contributions to government efforts on various child health matters. I am counting on the technical contribution to these papers from the various members that have expertise on the topics. All members are expected to draw the attention of the council to issues of interest that impact significantly on the lives of our children.
The Executive Council also aims to develop strategies and/or align with tested interventions and strategies that contribute towards achieving MDG 4 for Nigeria. As Chairman of PAN CME programme these past three years, I encouraged the adoption of Neonatal Resuscitation Programme for doctors and nurses as the main PAN CME programme since 2008. Hence you have witnessed the programme as one of the pre-conference workshops after the first one at PANCONF 2008 in Lagos. I wish to acknowledge the contributions of Dr Elizabeth Disu and her team of PAN neonatal resuscitation trainers. Various step-down trainings have been on-going in various institutions throughout the country. The Executive Council is in the process of scaling up this programme by collaborating with other stakeholders to improve on the number of doctors and nurses that acquire this skill in the states with worse child health indices in Nigeria. I want to appeal to all members to give all their support to the team of coordinators of this project when requested to do so.
A road map for PAN activities is also being drawn up as a 5year strategic framework. This will be made available to members to contribute to at the nearest general forum. However, each member should feel free to contribute opinions or draft strategic framework to the PAN secretariat. Meanwhile our website is being upgraded. Please send suggestions to our secretariat on how we can improve the website to be more interactive, more vibrant and more informative.
Lastly, we have witnessed great enthusiasm from members towards attending the next world congress of paediatricians, the 26th International Pediatric Association Congress of Pediatrics (IPA) 2010 in Johannesburg, South Africa, 4-9 August, 2010. This is very exciting for the Executive Council and we look forward to a fruitful interaction at the congress with other paediatricians from all the continents of the world.