On International Self-Care Day, observed on the 24th of July to symbolise self-care practised twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, I wish to highlight self-care as an essential pillar of preventive healthcare, and its growing significance as a pathway to efficiency, equity and resilience in the prevention of non-communicable diseases for health systems globally.

The @WHO defines self-care as the ability of individuals, families and communities to promote health, prevent disease, maintain health, and cope with illness and disability, with or without the support of a healthcare provider. The Global Self-Care Federation’s 2026 Global Social and Economic Value of Self-Care Report, launched this week in Geneva, finds that self-care generates 144 billion United States dollars in health system savings and 24 million quality-adjusted life years each year, and could deliver social and economic benefits up to 50% greater by 2040 where supportive policies on health literacy, access to quality-assured products and integration into national health strategies are in place.

At the @WellbeingAfrica Foundation, our frontline programming, which reinforces self-care as a key tool against antimicrobial resistance, has demonstrated that when mothers, families and communities are equipped with accurate health knowledge and skills to apply it, self-care becomes a functioning first tier of the health system, easing pressure on facilities and the workforce while improving outcomes across the reproductive, maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health continuum, and that prevention, practised daily and at scale, remains the most powerful instrument for nations seeking health for all.

As health systems contend with ageing populations, the rising burden of NCDs and constrained public budgets, I call on governments and partners to embed self-care within primary healthcare and universal health coverage frameworks, to invest in health literacy and ensure equitable access to the quality-assured tools and services that enable every individual to be the first guardian of their own health.

#ValueOfSelfCare
#InternationalSelfCareDay
#WellbeingForAll
#FrontlineFriday ...

Yesterday evening in New York, The Toyin Saraki Global Policy and Philanthropy Office and the @WellbeingAfrica Foundation were represented at the @UnitedNations Town Hall, The Next Secretary-General, convened in the General Assembly Hall at United Nations Headquarters by the President of the General Assembly @UNPGA, H.E. @ABaerbock, with the support of @Bloomberg as global media partner. WBFA was present in the Foundation’s capacity as a holder of Special Consultative Status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council @UN_ECOSOC.

The Town Hall assembled the six candidates seeking to succeed Secretary-General @AntonioGuterres, namely H.E. Michelle Bachelet of Chile, H.E. María Fernanda Espinosa of Ecuador, Director General Rafael Grossi of Argentina, Secretary-General Rebeca Grynspan of Costa Rica, Ambassador Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett of Guyana and H.E. Macky Sall of Senegal, each responding to questions from diplomats, United Nations staff and civil society ahead of the Security Council’s first informal ballot on 30 July.

The selection of the next Secretary-General bears directly upon the health and wellbeing of the mothers, newborns, children, adolescents, families and communities whom the Wellbeing Foundation Africa serves across Nigeria and the wider African continent, and upon the midwives, nurses and frontline health workers upon whom their care depends. Our presence within the Hall gave expression to our abiding conviction that their voices must be heard wherever the future of multilateralism is deliberated.

As the United Nations prepares to entrust its highest office to new stewardship, we invite all Member States to weigh each candidate’s dedication to universal health coverage, to the survival and flourishing of every mother and newborn, and to the full realisation of the Sustainable Development Goals. The Wellbeing Foundation Africa stands ready to serve alongside the next Secretary-General in pursuit of a healthier, fairer and more peaceful world.

#UNSG
#WellbeingForAll
#FrontlineFriday ...

As a longstanding member of the Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health @PMNCH_Insta, a Board Observer and a member of its Maternal, Newborn and Child Health Workstream Group, I welcome the launch of the PMNCH Financing Campaign, Lives in Balance, Finance the Promise, #Act4WCA, a two-year global initiative to secure sustainable financing for women’s, children’s and adolescents’ health, placing country-led resource mobilisation, parliamentary accountability and the defence of development assistance at the centre of the global health agenda.

According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, official development assistance for health fell by 23.1% in 2025, the steepest single-year decline on record, even as a woman continues to die in pregnancy or childbirth every 2 minutes and 4.9 million children did not live to see their fifth birthday in 2024, as recorded by the @WHO and @UnitedNations Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation.

The Partnership’s investment review shows that every US$1 invested in reproductive, maternal, newborn and child health returns up to US$20 in economic and social value, while the projected cost of failing to invest in adolescent wellbeing approaches US$110 trillion by 2050.

I am encouraged that Nigeria stands among the 5 initial campaign countries for domestic resource mobilisation, alongside Malawi, Senegal, Tanzania and Zambia, terrain we at the @WellbeingAfrica Foundation know through our frontline programming and advocacy for health workforce investment and quality care. Domestic financing anchored in political accountability offers the strongest and most sustainable foundation, and this campaign equips national coalitions to carry that argument into ministries of finance and parliaments alike.

The promise has been made and the resources must now follow, so I call upon governments, parliamentarians, donors, multilateral institutions, civil society and private sector partners to finance the futures of women, children and adolescents everywhere. Join us at act4wca.org.

#PMNCH
#WCAH
#PartnershipForChange
#WellbeingForAll ...

Today, on Nelson Mandela International Day, the world unites under the theme “It’s Still in Our Hands to Combat Poverty and Inequity,” as Madiba reminded us that “it is in your hands to make our world a better one for all, especially the poor, vulnerable and marginalised,” and it is in that spirit that we continue our commitment to the mothers, newborns, adolescents and frontline health workers at the centre of our @WellbeingAfrica mission.

The @WHO reports that sub-Saharan Africa bears approximately seventy per cent of global maternal deaths, while World Bank estimates show close to 700 million people still living in extreme poverty. Poverty and poor health are inseparable, and no nation can prosper while its women and children are denied quality care.

At #WBFA, we answer Madiba’s call by advancing universal health coverage, primary healthcare, reproductive, maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health, water, sanitation and hygiene, and the education and equipping of the frontline health workforce, so that no woman, child or community is left behind.

This Mandela Day, I call on governments and partners to finance health systems with urgency, invest in midwives and nurses, and measure progress by the wellbeing of the most vulnerable. It is still in our hands.

#MandelaDay
#ItsInOurHands
#HealthForAll
#WellbeingForAll ...

In condolence, I visited the Rhodes-Vivour family following the call to glory of the late Mrs Nkechi Stella Rhodes-Vivour (née Waboso), a beloved wife, devoted mother and grandmother, remembered by all as the epitome of love.

A life so well spent finds no finer measure than to be mourned so tenderly, and cherished so deeply, by those who knew and loved this remarkable matriarch.

My sympathies remain with the entire Rhodes-Vivour family at this time of loss. May her beautiful soul rest in perfect peace. Amen. ...

Yesterday in Lagos, I was delighted to visit Hayat Kimya Nigeria alongside our social impact partners at @ReckittNigeria and the @WellbeingAfrica Foundation’s Lagos Directors and Programme Team, where I met with Managing Director Mr Mohammad Asim Khan to discuss a shared agenda on menstrual health and newborn hygiene.

Hayat’s commitment to Nigeria is a model of purposeful investment. Its manufacturing plant in Agbara, Ogun State, has created jobs, earned market leadership through quality, and made Nigeria an export hub for West and Central Africa, placing trusted products in the daily lives of families from a baby’s first days to a girl’s school years.

Research published in Frontiers in Reproductive Health in 2025 found that more than half of school-age girls in Nigeria miss school each month because sanitary products are unaffordable or unavailable, a gap the Wellbeing Foundation Africa’s midwives and educators work to close every day, in the facilities where newborns take their first breath and the classrooms where girls deserve to learn without interruption.

From the newborn to the adolescent girl, dignity and health begin with the essentials. I look forward to what we will build together.

#NewbornHealth
#MenstrualHealth
#WellbeingForAll ...

Today, on #MalalaDay, we mark thirteen years since @Malala Yousafzai stood before the @UnitedNations on her sixteenth birthday and called upon world leaders to protect every girl’s right to education. It was an honour to join Malala in Abuja in 2023, at the United Nations House, during her third visit to Nigeria, where young advocates and civil society leaders gathered to renew our shared commitment to the girls of Nigeria and of Africa.

That commitment must be matched with action, for Malala Fund reports that more than 122 million girls remain out of school worldwide, even though a girl with an education can help grow economies, with the global economy standing to gain between 15 and 30 trillion dollars in productivity and earnings each year if every girl completed secondary school. Working alongside local activists, educators, and advocates, Malala Fund has reached 26 million students with education access and resources, and has helped unlock 7 billion dollars for girls’ education since 2013, yet each girl still excluded represents a future leader, thinker, and builder the world has yet to meet.

At the @WellbeingAfrica Foundation, we have always understood that a girl’s education and her health are inseparable, which is why our WBFA Adolescent Skills and Drills Programme sees frontline midwives and nurses deliver personal, social, health and economic education across Nigeria, equipping girls with the knowledge and life skills to stay in school and in good health.

Education makes economies stronger, communities healthier, and nations more resilient. On this day, I join @MalalaFund in recommitting to a future where every girl can learn and choose what comes next for her, and I call upon governments and partners across Africa to invest in the policies, teachers, healthcare workers and safe schools that will carry every girl through twelve years of free, safe, and quality education.

#MalalaDay2026
#WellbeingForAll ...

On World Population Day 2026, under the theme “Realizing the hopes and aspirations of young people – today and for the future," I welcome @UNFPA`s landmark report, Lives, Choices and Futures: What Young People Want and What Shapes Their Decisions about Relationships and Parenthood, drawn from the Demographic Futures Survey of more than 108,000 young adults aged 18 to 39 across 73 countries, one of the most geographically diverse bodies of evidence on how young people envision their futures.

The findings speak clearly, with more than two thirds of respondents wishing to marry or live with a partner and two children remaining the most desired family size across five of seven regions, while economic precarity, housing insecurity and constrained access to reproductive healthcare remain the most cited barriers to these aspirations, confirming that the defining demographic challenge of our era is the gap between reproductive aspiration and reproductive agency, the very gap the ICPD Programme of Action, on whose Nairobi Summit International Steering Committee I have been privileged to serve, seeks to close.

I congratulate the laureates of the forty-first @UnitedNations Population Award, Professor Serigne Magueye Gueye of Senegal, honoured for decades of surgery restoring dignity to women living with obstetric fistula and for training surgeons across 45 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, and H.E. Mrs Angeline Ndayishimiye, First Lady of Burundi, honoured for the Fondation Bonne Action Umugiraneza and its polyclinic serving rural Gitega Province.

This day resonates personally through my role as a Mentor to Young Leaders within UNFPA`s Youth Programming and through our Wellbeing for Women Africa Youth Voices Initiative @WBWVoices, elevating young advocates into the rooms where policy is made. Realising these aspirations now requires investment in housing, decent work and rights-based reproductive healthcare at a scale worthy of what young voices have told the world they want.

@WellbeingAfrica
#WorldPopulationDay
#LivesChoicesFutures
#WellbeingForAll ...

It was a distinguished privilege to be received yesterday by the Commonwealth Secretary-General, Hon. Shirley Botchwey, at Marlborough House in London @Commonwealth_Sec, our first official meeting since her appointment as the first woman from Africa to hold this office, and a conversation grounded in a shared commitment to a Commonwealth that works for its youngest citizens as much as its oldest institutions.

More than 60% of the Commonwealth`s 2.7 billion people are under the age of 30, and the majority of its 56 member states are classified as low- and middle-income countries, 14 of them among the world`s Least Developed Countries. It was this demographic and economic reality, together with the urgent priorities of youth mental health and youth entrepreneurship, that shaped much of our discussion.

As Global Honorary Patron of Lifeline International, a civil society organisation accredited to the @CommonwealthOrg Foundation, and as Co-Chair of the @AfricaREACH1 Leadership Council advancing Africa`s HIV response and health systems in line with the @AfricanUnion_Official’s Agenda 2063, I was glad to bring both platforms directly into the room, work that sits close to the mandate of the @WellbeingAfrica Foundation and the Wellbeing Africa Institute for Research and Development #WAIRD, and to my own conviction and advocacy that no young person`s wellbeing should depend on where in the Commonwealth they happen to be born.

I look forward to continuing this dialogue with the Office of the Secretary-General in the months ahead, as the Commonwealth prepares for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting #CHOGM in St John`s, Antigua and Barbuda this November, and to seeing these priorities placed firmly on that agenda.

#CommonwealthYouth
#WellbeingForAll ...

It was a privilege to spend the afternoon with Professor Sir Magdi Yacoub OM and his distinguished colleagues, learning about the Rwanda–Egypt Heart Centre as it approaches completion in Kigali @RwandaEgyptHeartCentre.

For me, this meeting reflected a journey of more than three decades in children’s heart health, from supporting @SaveAChildsHeart Nigeria through the Lifestream Charity since 1995 to championing rheumatic heart disease as a maternal, newborn and child health priority through global RHD Action, and now advancing equitable cardiovascular care for women, children and families through my @WellbeingAfrica Foundation.

Conceived as Rwanda’s first dedicated cardiac hospital, the centre will provide free diagnosis and treatment for congenital and acquired heart disease while strengthening specialist care, training, education and research across the region, a powerful example of African led excellence in healthcare delivery.

Professor Yacoub’s pioneering work in heart transplantation and paediatric cardiac surgery has transformed generations of care. Through the Magdi Yacoub Heart Foundation @Magdi_Yacoub_Foundation and as Vice Chair of the Rwanda Heart Care and Research Foundation, he has built a remarkable network of philanthropic cardiac centres spanning Aswan, Addis Ababa and now Kigali.

I commend the South-South partnership behind this endeavour, with the Governments of Rwanda and Egypt, the Sawiris Foundation for Social Development, @ChainofHopeUK and many clinical and philanthropic partners advancing a truly African owned model of healthcare.

This vision closely aligns with the Wellbeing Foundation Africa’s belief that lasting progress depends on specialist infrastructure, trained frontline professionals and cross-border collaboration rooted in local leadership.

I look forward to seeing this institution open its doors to families across Rwanda and sub-Saharan Africa, bringing world-class cardiac care closer to home and mending little hearts for generations to come.

#RwandaEgyptHeartCentre
#MendingLittleHearts
#RheumaticHeartDisease
#LifestreamCharity
#WellbeingForAll ...

It is an honour to congratulate Rotarian Olutoyin Mobisola Odulate upon her Installation Ceremony as the 66th President of the @RotaryClubofLagos, and the induction of the 2026 to 2027 Board of Directors at The Metropolitan Club, Victoria Island.

Founded in 1961 under Charter President Chief S. L. Edu, the Rotary Club of Lagos remains the oldest active Rotary club in Nigeria, a heritage that lends real weight to this installation. Rotarian Odulate brings sixteen years of senior leadership at L`Oréal and Danone, and the entrepreneurial resolve behind Olori Beauty Enterprise, to a role that calls for exactly that calibre of judgement.

I am delighted that the club`s four priorities for the year ahead, cervical cancer vaccination, feminine hygiene provision, classroom and sanitation renovation, and the scaling of microcredit, form a programme of real coherence, treating health, education and economic opportunity as one continuum. It is a vision that speaks directly to the work of @WellbeingAfrica across maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health, and I look forward to the ways our paths may cross in the year ahead.

Warmest congratulations to Rotarian Odulate, the incoming Board, and the entire Rotary family in Lagos, every good wish for a productive and impactful year of service!

#RotaryClubOfLagos
#ServiceAboveSelf
#WellbeingForAll ...

It was a privilege to join the @WTA Foundation and the @GatesFoundation, at their kind invitation, for a high-level private discussion on improving maternal health and nutrition in the world`s most vulnerable communities, held ahead of an afternoon at @Wimbledon yesterday, in support of the WTA Foundation`s Women Change the Game campaign for their Global Women’s Health Fund and @UNICEF`s Child Nutrition Fund, and its work to scale up maternal and child nutrition delivery worldwide.

Nearly four in five Nigerian women are affected by anaemia, and nine in ten women across low and middle income countries still lack access to prenatal vitamins, a gap that continues to cost mothers and children their lives and their futures, and one that is not an abstraction to me but a description of the women @WellbeingAfrica serves every day, through our WBFA midwife led antenatal and postnatal care under our #MamaCare360 platform, where nutrition counselling, breastfeeding support and respectful maternity care are delivered alongside one another as a single continuum of care.

Conversations of this kind, uniting philanthropic capital, corporate partnership and civil society delivery, are how the promise made to mothers and children is finally kept.

I urged CNF donors to consider integrating private sector institutional health providers access within the Fund’s wider scaling implementation, extending coverage into its reach and turning these important commitments into universal nutrition care.

My thanks to the WTA Foundation, the Gates Foundation and UNICEF for the invitation, and for a shared commitment to closing this gap together.

#MaternalHealth
#ChildNutrition
#WimbledonForGood
#WellbeingForAll ...

Every new month is a merciful grace. What we do with it is our gift back to God, and a gift we give ourselves.

Happy New Month, and a warm welcome to July! As we begin the second half of the year and step into Q3, this chapter meets us mid-stride, with much ground still to cover. Every new month is simply another chance to move that work forward, with gratitude, confidence and hope for all that lies ahead.

As we bid June farewell, we also celebrate our June birthday stars at the @WellbeingAfrica Foundation, Zainab Jimoh, Aminat Akingbade and Prince Ariwodo. Happy Birthday, and thank you for your dedication and service.

Happy New Month, and welcome to this new chapter. ✨

#HelloJuly #Q3
#HappyNewMonth
#PurposeInAction
#WellbeingForAll ...