I was pleased to join a closed-door roundtable during the @WHO 79th World Health Assembly in Geneva, hosted by Professor Sofia Gruskin, Distinguished Professor of Population and Public Health Sciences and Law and Director of the @USCEdu Institute on Inequalities in Global Health.

The gathering brought together many distinguished global health leaders, including Elhadj As Sy, Chancellor of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine @LSTMNews, Co-Chair of the Global Preparedness Monitoring Board and Chair of the @KofiAnnanFoundation Board, and Rajat Khosla, Executive Director of @PMNCH_Insta, the Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health, whose 2026 agenda has centred the urgent need to move from crisis management to genuine system correction across women’s, children’s and adolescents’ health.

The USC Institute on Inequalities in Global Health works precisely at the intersection that made this conversation so valuable, advancing the evidence base on what drives health inequality, training the next generation of global health leaders, and engaging directly with the policy processes that determine whether that evidence translates into change. Its cross-sectoral, multidisciplinary approach mirrors the conviction the @WellbeingAfrica Foundation holds that the structural conditions producing unequal health outcomes require equally structural responses, grounded in community experience, driven by rigorous evidence, and accountable to the populations they are designed to serve.

Grateful to Professor Gruskin for convening a conversation of this quality and to all those present for the rigour and candour they brought to it, including Dr Bronwyn King AO, founder and CEO of Tobacco Free Portfolios and Co-Founder of Air Club, whose work at the intersection of health, finance and the built environment represents exactly the kind of cross-sectoral thinking needed.

#WHA79
#HealthEquity
#WellbeingForAll ...

It was an honour to serve as a panellist at the Advancing Maternal Health Through AI-Enabled Medical Devices and Software Panel and Roundtable, hosted by @Philips and the Business Council for International Understanding on the sidelines of the @WHO 79th World Health Assembly in Geneva, an evening that brought together senior clinical, policy and industry leaders around the most consequential implementation challenge in maternal health, extending skilled diagnostic care to the women who need it most, in the settings where the burden of preventable death remains highest.

Convened by Dr. Carla Goulart Peron, Chief Medical Officer at Philips, alongside Dr. Matthew Rielly, Business Leader for Joint Ventures in Access and Obstetrics, Professor Stephen Rulisa of the East Central and Southern Africa College of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, and Professor Marleen Temmerman of Aga Khan University, who contributed her clinical and academic perspective virtually, the discussion centred on AI-enabled point-of-care ultrasound, specifically the SmartSweep application on the Philips Lumify Handheld Ultrasound, which automates image acquisition to support midwives and frontline health workers in identifying gestational age, placenta location and fetal risk parameters without specialist sonography training.

The WHO recommends every pregnant woman receive at least one ultrasound scan before 24 weeks of gestation, a standard that remains out of reach for millions across sub-Saharan Africa, and one that the @WellbeingAfrica has worked to advance through sustained investment in midwife training, community health worker capacity, and increasing frontline access to modern diagnostic tools across Nigeria. The work has shown consistently that when implementation architecture is right, when care pathways are coherent, protocols are co-designed with the workers who deliver them, and deployment is sequenced toward the most underserved communities, technology of this quality produces outcomes that national averages alone will never fully capture.

I look forward to continuing this work with Philips and to the partnerships that will carry it forward.

#WHA79
#AIForHealth
#WellbeingForAll ...

It was an honour to serve on the judging panel for the inaugural Future Health Challenge, delivered by @FutureHealth_Initiative in collaboration with @SolveMIT, during the @WHO 79th World Health Assembly in Geneva, organised around the defining question of this moment in global health, how do we build health systems that anticipate, rather than simply respond?

Five extraordinary finalist teams presented solutions of genuine ambition and real-world evidence. The winner, ThinkMD from Australia, equips frontline health workers with mobile clinical decision-support tools that improve triage, treatment and referral while turning routine care encounters into real-time population health signals, already deployed across more than 9,000 frontline workers in 885 facilities, with demonstrated early warning capability preceding a cholera outbreak in Zambia.

Distinguished Finalists @Vector.Cam, an AI-enabled mosquito surveillance system helping health systems detect vector risks earlier and target interventions before outbreaks escalate, and @Huna.AI Cancer Navigator from Brazil, applying AI to routine blood data to identify elevated cancer risk earlier and having screened more than 500,000 patients with hundreds of cases detected that would otherwise have gone unidentified far longer, each offered proof that anticipatory health intelligence is a present capability, deployable at scale, with measurable population health impact.

What emerged across five teams, five countries, and five entirely distinct approaches was a shared conviction that the solutions most likely to transform health outcomes are those designed to reach the communities carrying the greatest burden of preventable disease, a standard @WellbeingAfrica holds its own work to.

Congratulations to all finalist teams, ThinkMD, VectorCam, Huna Cancer Navigator, SPAQ and Unread Signal, for the quality and ambition of the work presented, and to Future Health, a Global Initiative by Abu Dhabi, in partnership with MIT Solve, for convening a challenge that has advanced the field and set a standard for what innovation in anticipatory health systems can and should look like.

#WHA79
#WellbeingForAll ...

As the @WHOFoundation`s Inaugural Global Health Ambassador, it was a meaningful afternoon to share the @WellbeingAfrica Foundation`s frontline learnings at the roundtable on From Early Warning to Anticipatory Action: Advancing Proactive Emergency Preparedness at @GoalsHouse in Geneva, co-hosted by Dr. Marie Roseline Belizaire, Regional Emergency Director at @WHO_Africa, and Valerie Boulet, Chief Development Officer at the WHO Foundation, with fellow colleagues from @ColgatePalmoliveCo, @GoogleHealth, @Microsoft, among others, as part of the Health Emergencies Alliance convening programme on the sidelines of the @WHO 79th World Health Assembly.

Africa has every capacity to move from response to preparedness, and the infrastructure investment of the past decade has built the foundations to make that possible. The opportunity now is in the translation layer, connecting the signal to the decision with the speed and coherence that communities on the frontline deserve. Our #WBFA health workers are often the first to observe a pattern forming, and the real breakthrough comes when that observation moves upward into a coordinated response in real time. That requires sustained partnership, community trust, political will, and pre-positioned resources. Those are the conditions that make the technology work, and that make platforms like the Preparedness Data Exchange PDX, developed by Dr. Dick Chamla and the Nairobi Emergency Hub team, such an important step forward for the continent.

In 2025 and 2026, the Health Emergencies Alliance has focused specifically on leveraging AI and data to monitor potential health emergencies, and this discussion on what it will genuinely take to move proven preparedness solutions from ambition to scale was exactly the quality of conversation this moment demands, marking what I hope will be the first of many as Goals House at #WHA79 inaugurates this convening platform at the World Health Assembly.

#WellbeingForAll
#OneHealth
#FrontlineFriday ...

As a member of the @BayerOfficial Sustainability Council, it was a privilege to join Dr. Claus Runge, Senior Vice President and Global Head of Public Affairs, Sustainability and Internal Engagement and Chief Health Equity Officer at Bayer Pharmaceuticals, and Dr. Cecilia Caetano, Vice President and Head of Global Medical Affairs for Women’s Health at Bayer, at the Menopause Matters convening hosted by Bayer and @ForeignPolicyMag on the sidelines of the @WHO 79th World Health Assembly. 

By 2030, 1.2 billion women worldwide will be in menopause or postmenopause, many at the peak of their professional and civic lives, and yet menopause remains chronically underfunded, under-researched, and absent from the health systems and workplace policies designed to support them, a reality rigorously documented in the FP Analytics Special Report on the Health and Economic Impacts of Menopause, produced with support from Bayer, and the evidence base that anchored the afternoon’s discussion among policymakers, health practitioners, researchers, and advocates committed to changing that.

As we work collectively to advance Bayer`s global sustainability strategy across health equity, healthcare access, and climate resilience, conversations of this quality and ambition are precisely the mechanism through which practical partnerships are built, actionable solutions are surfaced, and the most systematically neglected issues in global health are finally given the policy attention and investment they demand.

#WHA79 
#StrongerTogether 
#HealthForAll 
#WellbeingForAll ...

As a Champion of the @WorldEconomicForum Global Alliance for Women`s Health, I was honoured to join fellow Champions yesterday at the WEF Headquarters in Geneva on the margins of the @WHO 79th World Health Assembly, convening with senior leaders from across healthcare, life sciences, technology, policy and civil society at the Annual Health Roundtable 2026 to define how the Alliance translates growing global momentum on women`s health into coordinated, measurable impact by 2030.

The session was anchored by two landmark publications released this week, the Care Delivery Roadmap, developed with the @McKinseyHealthInstitute, which establishes that care delivery failures account for 34% of the women`s health gap and that closing them represents a structural investment opportunity generating a 3 to 6 times return, and the Women`s Health Innovation Radar, developed with @KearneyOfficial, the @GatesFoundation and @WellcomeLeap, which maps the science-to-patient journey across ten high-impact conditions, bringing new transparency to where innovation is advancing and where critical gaps persist.

As a voice for African women`s health within the Alliance, I am committed to ensuring that the evidence base, the policy asks and the financing recommendations that emerge from these conversations are grounded in the realities of African health systems, where the women`s health gap is most acute and where the returns on closing it are greatest.

#WHA79
#HealthForAll
#WellbeingForAll ...

On Tuesday morning at the 79th @WHO World Health Assembly in Geneva, I was honoured to join the Catalysts on the Rise session convened by the Health Innovation Exchange, Reckitt Catalyst and the Canton of Geneva, alongside an extraordinary group of leaders, including Elhadj As Sy of the @KofiAnnanFoundation and Chancellor of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine @LSTMNews, Dr Ouma Oluga, Principal Secretary for Health of Kenya @MoHKenya, Temie Giwa-Tubosun, Founder of @LifebankCares, Kat Esser of @Amazon`s Global Impact Accelerator, and Sergio Lopez and Susannah Herbert of @ThisisReckitt Catalyst, in a conversation moderated by the visionary Pradeep Kakkattil of HIEx.

The first #ReckittCatalyst Thought Leadership publication, launched at this session, names something I have long believed and long worked within, that women-led health innovation does not have a shortage of ideas but an adoption problem, and the missing middle between a pilot that works and a government procurement that follows is where most of the most important innovations are lost, overwhelmingly affecting founders who are women and who are building from the Global South.

At the @WellbeingAfrica Foundation, our work across Nigeria has shown us firsthand that the barriers facing a woman health entrepreneur are about what happens after the evidence is there, after the model works, when there is no pathway forward, no government champion with the mandate and authority to integrate, and no patient capital willing to bridge the gap between a proven demonstration and adoption at the scale the system actually needs. Genuine public-private partnership, rooted in patient capital, long-term institutional commitment and shared accountability, is what this moment demands and what the leaders in Geneva this week have the power and the responsibility to deliver.

Governments must procure from women-led health enterprises at scale and against defined timelines, investors must match their capital structures to the long adoption cycles of health system change, and civil society must serve as the connective tissue that keeps every partnership honest and community-centred across every stage of delivery. ...

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 ...