On International Nurses Day, marked each year on the anniversary of Florence Nightingale’s birth, I welcome the International Council of Nurses 2026 theme, ‘Our Nurses. Our Future. Empowered Nurses Save Lives’, and honour the women and men whose vigilance and competence hold our health systems together at every hour of every day.

The @WHO and ICN State of the World’s Nursing Report records a global shortage of 5.8 million nurses, with the @WHO_Africa Region projected to bear nearly 70 per cent of the deficit by 2030. These are the very geographies in which the burden of maternal, newborn, child, and adolescent mortality remains heaviest, and where the nurse is most often the first, the last, and the only clinician a family will ever meet.

At The @WellbeingAfrica Foundation, the nurse and the midwife sit at the centre of our service-delivery model, providing skilled clinical care and trusted counsel to mothers across the full family health continuum, driving the early detection and treatment of neonatal jaundice through Project Oscar — Light for Life, to safeguard newborns from a preventable cause of disability and death, and leading our Personal, Social, Health and Economic Education #PSHE and Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene #WASH programming, amongst much more on the frontlines.

Empowering nurses to save lives demands safe working conditions, fair compensation, leadership pathways, and sustained investment in nursing education and retention across Africa. I call on governments and partners to honour today by investing in nurses with the seriousness their work demands, for when nurses are empowered, families thrive, communities prosper, and nations grow stronger.

#IND2026
#OurNursesOurFuture
#WellbeingForAll ...

Last week, along with the @WellbeingAfrica Foundation team, I joined the @WHO International Day of the Midwife 2026 Webinar, convened to take stock of where the world stands on the transition to Midwifery Models of Care #MMoC, and to learn directly from countries operationalising this shift within their health systems.

Progress on reducing maternal and newborn mortality has largely stagnated since 2016. One-third of women worldwide do not receive even four of the eight antenatal care contacts recommended by WHO. These are the conditions under which midwifery models, built on continuity, person-centred practice, and the autonomous exercise of the full scope of midwifery competence, are now a global health imperative.

The WHO’s Implementation Guidance on Transitioning to Midwifery Models of Care, published in June 2025, identifies four adaptable pathways: continuity of care with a known midwife or team; midwife-led birth centres; community-based approaches; and regulated private midwifery practice integrated into national health systems. Each addresses a different dimension of the access gap, and for governments asking what implementation looks like in practice, civil society organisations such as the Wellbeing Foundation Africa have been the evidence in the field.

On this #MaternalMonday, I continue to honour every midwife who has shown up, in clinics, in communities, in conflict zones, delivering that evidence in practice, every single day.

#IDM2026
#WellbeingForAll ...

As Maternal Mental Health Awareness Week 2026 is marked under the theme A Decade of Voices, and as the world observes World Maternal Mental Health Day with the call to stand Stronger Together, I am honoured, as Global Honorary Patron of LifeLine International and during Mental Health Awareness Month this May, to highlight the global movement working to ensure that every mother’s mental health is seen, prioritised, and protected.

Worldwide, 1 in 5 mothers experiences a perinatal mood and anxiety disorder, and an estimated 7 in 10 women hide or downplay their symptoms entirely. Across Nigeria and the wider African continent, the @WHO estimates that perinatal mental health conditions affect between 10% and 30% of mothers, compounded by stigma, fragmented health systems, and the cultural pressure on women to suffer in silence.

At the @WellbeingAfrica Foundation, we have long held the belief that there is no health without mental health. Through #MamaCare360, WBFA-trained midwives conduct mental health screenings, fostering brave spaces for women to speak honestly. The WBFA Postpartum Mental Health Checklist, embedded and validated within Nigeria’s National Mother and Child Health Handbook, ensures each mother is guided to the right level of care at the right moment.

We are grateful to @Glblctzn for documenting this work and amplifying the urgent case it makes for systemic change, and to @FIGO_HQ for convening the XXV Pre-Congress Workshop alongside the University of Cape Town’s Perinatal Mental Health Project @thepmhp, where WBFA contributed African implementation evidence to a global dialogue on integrating mental healthcare into maternal and child health systems.

Every woman’s journey is her own, and yet the responsibility to meet her within it is shared. Governments, health ministries, and global partners must mandate screening at maternal care touchpoints, resource frontline health workers with the tools to detect and refer with competence and compassion, and work towards a world in which no mother is left to carry this weight alone.

#MaternalMHMatters
#StrongerTogether
#WellbeingForAll ...

As African World Heritage Day was marked yesterday, an occasion proclaimed by the 38th session of the General Conference of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation @UNESCO to celebrate the continent’s extraordinary cultural and natural heritage, I am honoured to lift the voices of the young Africans who are its most vital custodians, in the spirit of UNESCO’s Voices and Eloquence of African World Heritage initiative.

UNESCO has documented that African properties account for approximately 12% of all inscribed World Heritage sites worldwide, yet 39% of those properties appear on the List of World Heritage in Danger, threatened by climate change, uncontrolled development, poaching, and civil instability, a reality that falls hardest on the communities where our next generation of leaders are growing up.

At the @WellbeingAfrica Foundation, we understand that the health, dignity, and potential of young Africans are shaped by the cultures, traditions, and living histories that surround them. Through the WBFA Wellbeing for Women Africa Youth Voices Initiative, we elevate passionate young advocates into decision-making spaces, investing in young people as inheritors of Africa’s heritage and as the voices that must carry it forward.

Alongside this, as a Counsellor of @OneYoungWorld, I have mentored young African leaders whose commitment to their communities is inseparable from their pride in where they come from.

With this in mind, in line with this year’s theme, Celebrating Africa’s Heritage, Mentoring the Leaders of Tomorrow, I urge governments and multilateral partners to treat the safeguarding of Africa’s World Heritage as the development priority it is, and to ensure that the next generation is resourced, supported, and heard.

📸: One Young World Summit, Munich, Germany, November 2025

#AfricanWorldHeritageDay
#WellbeingForAll ...

On this #WorkersDay, I join the global health community in recognising the truth that drives every breakthrough in maternal care, every immunisation delivered, and every life saved, that sustainable development is built upon the expertise, dedication, and professionalism of the frontline health workers who carry it forward.

To the @WellbeingAfrica Foundation team, and to our partners across Nigeria, the African continent, and the wider global development and social impact landscape, whose technical rigour and commitment to reproductive, maternal, newborn, child, and adolescent health continue to generate meaningful progress for the communities we serve, I extend my deepest commendation and appreciation.

This #FrontlineFriday and International Workers` Day, we honour every individual who brings knowledge and purpose to the work of advancing health equity, and acknowledge the workers who sustain our societies, our economies, and the foundations of human progress worldwide.

#MayDay
#WellbeingForAll ...

As we mark World Day for Safety and Health at Work under the stewardship of the International Labour Organization @ILO.Org, I uphold, alongside the global community of governments, employers and workers, a principle that sits at the very foundation of decent work and human dignity, which is the inalienable right of every worker, in every sector, in every geography, to a safe, healthy and humane working environment.

The ILO`s 2026 Global Report, The Psychosocial Working Environment: Global Developments and Pathways for Action, sets out a sobering truth, that work-related psychosocial risks are now responsible for more than 840,000 deaths each year through associated cardiovascular diseases and mental disorders, and account for an estimated 1.37 per cent of global GDP lost annually, a burden that demands the same regulatory rigour we have long extended to physical, chemical and biological hazards.

Through my @WellbeingAfrica Foundation, I have long advocated for a healthy, dignified and adequately resourced health workforce, recognising that in healthcare, midwives, nurses, community health workers and doctors constitute the human infrastructure on which Universal Health Coverage and SDG 3 are built, and that their working conditions, including workload, supervision, professional development and training, protection from violence and harassment, and psychosocial support, determine whether quality maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health services reach the women and families who need them most.

The Report`s call is one of prevention across three interrelated levels, the design of the job itself, the way work is managed and organised, and the broader policies, practices and procedures that govern work, and it is at each of these levels that governments, employers and workers must act in concert if we are to honour the promise of decent work in an era reshaped by digitalisation, artificial intelligence, climate pressures and new forms of employment.

This day is also observed as the International Commemoration Day for Dead and Injured Workers, and I join the global movement in remembrance and in renewed commitment to prevention.

#SafeDay
#WellbeingForAll ...

On this World Malaria Day, I join the World Health Organization @WHO, the RBM Partnership to End Malaria @RBMPartnership, the Global Fund @GlobalFund and partners across the global health community in answering this year`s clarion call, Driven to End Malaria. Now We Can. Now We Must.

Across sub-Saharan Africa, malaria remains a maternal, newborn and child health emergency of the first order. The @WHO_Africa Region carries 94 per cent of global cases and 95 per cent of global deaths, and three in every four lives lost belong to a child under five. Nigeria alone accounts for almost a third of global malaria deaths, with 97 per cent of our population at risk. For the pregnant woman, malaria is a silent adversary of safe motherhood, driving anaemia, stillbirth, low birth weight and the shadow of preventable maternal death.

At the @WellbeingAfrica Foundation, our frontline programming has always treated malaria as inseparable from the survival of mothers and newborns. Through MamaCare360, our midwives equip pregnant women with the knowledge to access preventive treatment, sleep under insecticide-treated nets, and recognise fever in their infants in time for prompt diagnosis and effective therapy. Through our Emergency Obstetric and Newborn Care programming and advocacy, we educate frontline health workers to manage the severe anaemia and obstetric complications in which malaria so often plays an unseen role. We stand alongside Nigeria`s National Malaria Elimination Programme, the Nigeria End Malaria Council and the High Burden to High Impact approach as stewards of our national response.

We have the tools. We have the evidence. We have the science. What we owe the next generation is the political will, the predictable financing and the community trust to deploy them at scale. No mother, no child, no family should die from a mosquito bite in 2026. Now we can. Now we must.

📸: @COP28UAEOfficial @GhettoKids_TFUG @MalariaNoMore @GoalsHouse, December 2023

#WorldMalariaDay
#DrivenToEndMalaria
#ZeroMalariaStartsWithMe
#WellbeingForAll ...

Today, on the International Day of Multilateralism and Diplomacy for Peace, I am highlighting the @UnitedNations Charter which stands as the foundational text of our collective commitment, establishing multilateralism as the governing framework through which nations harmonise their actions in pursuit of peace, sustainable development, and the protection of human rights for all.

At the Summit of the Future in September 2024, world leaders adopted the Pact for the Future, and it is within the spirit of that Pact that the @WellbeingAfrica Foundation has always operated, translating global commitments into evidence-based, community-rooted delivery across the health and wellbeing of women and children in Nigeria and globally.

Secretary-General Guterres has observed that we cannot create a future fit for our grandchildren with a system built by our grandparents, and WBFA will continue to advance the virtues of diplomacy and multilateral engagement throughout the continental and global development landscape, working alongside our institutional, civil society, and private sector partners to ensure that the promises of this system are honoured where they matter most.

#MultilateralismDay
#WellbeingForAll ...

On this International Girls in ICT Day, I stand with the global community under the theme AI for Development: Girls Shaping the Digital Future, because as artificial intelligence continues to reshape healthcare, education, governance, and economic life at a pace and scale the world has never before witnessed, ensuring that girls are at the centre of that change is among the most urgent obligations before us.

Across Sub-Saharan Africa, men are 60 per cent more likely than women to perform at least one ICT-related task, Africa’s gender parity score in internet use remains the lowest of any ITU region, and by the age of 15 only 0.5 per cent of girls aspire to careers in ICT compared to 5 per cent of boys, figures that represent futures deferred, innovations unrealised, and systems designed without the perspectives of the communities they are meant to serve.

Through our @WellbeingAfrica Adolescent Skills and Drills Personal, Social, Health and Economic Education Programme, and under its WBFA Digital Village, the Wellbeing Foundation Africa has embedded digital literacy and STEM education within the health and development journeys of thousands of adolescent girls across Nigeria, grounded in our long-held conviction that girls must be visible in data, present in research, and represented in the leadership structures that transform their futures.

Achieving the @UnitedNations Sustainable Development Goals will require the full, equal, and meaningful participation of girls and young women in every dimension of the digital economy, and this day serves as a reminder that the commitment of governments, civil society, and the private sector to make that participation a reality must be matched by investment, by policy, and by intention.

#GirlsInICT
#AIForDevelopment
#WellbeingForAll ...

Happy 86th Birthday to His Royal Highness, Alhaji (Dr.) Ibrahim Sulu-Gambari, the esteemed Emir of Ilorin!

Your continued leadership, wisdom, and dedication to traditional values have been a guiding light of inspiration.

May Almighty God grant you good health and prosperity as you devotedly serve Ilorin Emirate, Kwara State, and the Nation. Ameen! ...

🌍 On this International Mother #EarthDay2026, I am highlighting the principle of #OneHealth, the recognition that human health, animal health, and environmental health are inseparable systems that must be governed as such, because when Mother Earth sends us a message, those of us working at the intersection of global health policy and human development have an obligation to respond with far more than acknowledgement.

In Nigeria, that message is written in the contraction of the Lake Chad Basin, which has lost nearly 90% of its surface area within a single generation, in the maternal and infant mortality rates of Niger Delta communities bearing the compounded burden of decades of environmental exploitation, and in the advancing desertification across our northern states that is dismantling the food systems and water sources upon which maternal and child survival depend.

With over 60 million Nigerians still lacking access to basic sanitation, and water contamination directly linked to ecological degradation remaining a leading driver of child mortality, the #WASH crisis in this country is inseparable from the environmental crisis we mark today, as the @WHO and @WHO_Africa have documented that over 13 million deaths annually are attributable to preventable environmental causes, with the burden falling disproportionately on women, children, and low-income communities across the Global South.

The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, the Paris Agreement, and the WHO-COP Health Programme, alongside the vital work of @UNEP, @UNFPA, @WHONigeria and @UN_Nigeria in supporting Nigeria`s climate and health response, all demand the same answer, the full integration of environmental governance into health systems policy, into national financing frameworks, and into the multilateral accountability mechanisms that determine whether commitments made in conference rooms translate into changed conditions on the ground.

I am proud to continue to commit to the @UnitedNations #ActNow campaign, because the shift this moment requires begins with each of us choosing to govern, advocate, and act accordingly.

#WASHWednesday ...