‘The Educated Girl Of Today Is The Empowered Woman Of Tomorrow’
Dr. Chioma Nwakanma-Akanno is a reproductive healthcare physician, speaker and advocate. She’s the founder of Medically Speaking Services and Creative Director of #DrZobo, a prominent virtual health literacy and advocacy platform dedicated to improving the health and rights of African women and adolescents through witty visual storytelling. As Executive Director of Smile With Me Foundation, a non-profit organisation leveraging digital technology to provide underserved women and adolescents with quality and affordable preventive reproductive healthcare services.
She holds certifications in Leadership and Management in Healthcare from the University of Washington, U.S.; Research from Harvard Medical School; GBViE from American University Yola and Civic Engagement from the University of Delaware, U.S.
Nwakanma-Akanno is an alumnus of YALI RLC West Africa; a Mandela Washington Fellow, Publicity Secretary of MWF Alumni Association of Nigeria and a digital influencer for the International Centre for Journalism Knights Fellows. She was honoured as the UNDP Geneva Changemaker for SGS Geneva in 2021. A two-time Healthcare finalist of the Future Awards Africa, she is a 2021 recipient of the Royal African Awards and listed as one of the most powerful and influential young Nigerians under 40. A cohort member of the 2023 Leap Women Africa programme for women in tech, she speaks to IJEOMA THOMAS-ODIA, on her motivation for championing women’s health, among other issues.
Share with us your growing up and how it influenced your passion for women’s health and rights?
Growing up actually influenced my passion for women’s health. I am the first daughter in a family of six; four children and my parents. My extended family is mostly medical. So, we have a lot of doctors and nurses; my grandparents were both nurses. I grew up in a medical shadow. At some point in secondary school, people thought I would be an actress, because I am good with communication.
One of the things that influence me towards going for women’s health would also be my mother. She had an NGO focused on adolescent healthcare specific to HIV. So, at age 11, I was a volunteer. My experience in volunteering really grew my interest in HIV. I was exposed to sex education very early. And those things actually shaped my choices personally because I knew firsthand what these diseases were, how to prevent them and how to avoid them.
Take us through your career journey in health communications, advocacy, sexual and reproductive health and rights?
My journey started from medical school. I am a part of the 2016 Graduating Class of Abia State University. I did my house job in 2017 at the university’s Teaching Hospital. I would say my journey through health advocacy has been a product of my everyday experiences in my clinical, digital and community work. I have had first hand exposure to what it entails when it comes to the battle we face with preventable diseases in Nigeria. I hear a lot of people say whenever they come into the clinic “I wish I knew” or “Had I known.” So, I am kind of set to answer that question.
How do I know I am unwell? How do I prevent these diseases? I have this disease, where do I get help? How do I access help? Where do I get it affordable? What is health insurance? What do I do in the meantime before I get to the hospital? Within these questions lie a gap that needs to be filled; because in answering these questions, we are saving millions of lives, as a lot of Nigerians have complicated health issues just because they lack access to quality, verified health information.
I lost someone close to me to cervical cancer, which is a very preventable cancer. It’s almost a hundred per cent preventable through early vaccination, early and timely screening, and in the early stages it can be treated. But this relative of mine was unaware of what cervical cancer was in the first place and that is an error I have been trying to fix. I have dedicated my life towards fixing it; sensitising the public on what cervical cancer is, letting them know what they can do to prevent it, how they can get help and where they can access quality preventable services. Over time, we evolved to not just focusing on cervical cancer, but also other reproductive health diseases that cause concern and of course these include menstrual hygiene management, Gender Based Violence, Sexually Transmitted Infection (STI) prevention and cervical cancer prevention.
What informed your decision to move in this path?
My decision to move into this path was a product of my experiences. It’s just been a learning curve. At the point of graduation, I wanted to be a dermatologist. I still have interests in skincare and dermatology. However, the personal experiences I had and seeing the realities on ground when I started my practice helped that shift to reproductive healthcare specifically. Also, there’s a lot of marginalisation when it comes to women’s health; when we talk about economic inequalities, gender inequalities, those are also very evident in healthcare. So, the work that I do is not just about tending to women’s health, it’s also empowering women and this starts even from the adolescent level. I believe that the educated girl of today is the empowered woman of tomorrow. And we know the important roles women play in society. So, the work we do is not just about giving you healthcare, but also empowering you with skills – life skills, digital skills, economic skills – that you need to be able to thrive in society.
When a woman is not able to find her own healthcare or when she does not have health insurance, she knows but she can’t act on it. I’ve seen the experiences of women and young girls, and I think there are a lot of gaps that still need to be filled and adolescent thoughts shouldn’t be an afterthought. It should be engrained in everything we do. I have seen a lot of judgments and intimidation when it comes to reproductive healthcare, especially when it’s women and adolescents. There’s just this timidity; it feels like a taboo topic, even down to periods that are biologically normal. It’s a hush, hush situation when it comes to women’s reproductive health. This hush and secretive way of following up on women’s health is one of the factors that has worsened the health of a lot of women because nobody wants to talk about what they are going through. So, I’m trying to create an environment that is judgment free and confidential, where women get comfortable enough to talk about whatever it is they want to do and when they are ready to do it.
You are a strong advocate for women’s sexual and reproductive health. What are some of the highpoints that drive your advocacy?
Regardless of gender, religion, culture or status, everyone should have access to healthcare. Universal Health Coverage is a goal for me. It is one of the things that drive me. I don’t believe that just because I am a woman, I shouldn’t be able to have autonomy of choice to the kind of healthcare services that I want. We have had cases of women who I wouldn’t say were denied, but who didn’t go through with certain procedures because their husbands did not permit. I’m talking about life-saving procedures like Caesarian Section (CS). And most times, you find out that this is rooted in ignorance, culture and poverty because what’s the alternative? Most times, they don’t want to pay for CS because of the cultural shaming thing. I believe women should have access to healthcare. They have the right to their bodies; they have the right to choices.
Another thing that drives me is adolescents. If we leave the young girls and just chase the women, we are just going to keep waiting for them to metamorphose into those women who we are going to keep trying to change in adulthood and it’s harder to change someone who is set in her ways. So, we start young; we educate them, empower them and raise confident women.
There is interconnectivity between self-confidence and your health, because when you are confident, you will make the right health choices. And that’s what people need to understand when we talk about sex education. Sex education is not encouraging your children to go and have sex; it’s empowering them to know their bodies well, to know when certain changes are occurring, to know what their rights are, to say no I don’t or yes I do. The truth is no matter how much we try to cover them or shield them from the dangers of the world, at some point, they are going to be on their own and be the victims of their own choices.
And so, we need to empower them with choices; let them know what these implications are and also empower them enough to have a built self-esteem, because that way they will not need validation from society or peers. And when you have confident people, they are able to make choices. Statistics back this. They are actually able to make choices, not just life choices but also career choices, reproductive choices and sexual health choices that will inform their health for tomorrow. When individuals are healthy, our society is healthy.
You constantly leverage social media to churn out content that educates women especially on their health. What informed this?
What informed this is data. If I want to take one state at a time (we have 36 states in Nigeria), one government at a time, one community at a time, to educate a country of over 200 million people, it’s going to take me years. And of course, I can’t do that alone. One beautiful thing that we have seen on social media is it can take me an hour or two of intense campaigns geared towards a particular topic. We can have just an IG Live or a Twitter Space back then when we had Twitter Chats, and you can have an impression of 12 million within 24 hours. And that singular post that is educative and empowering can get across to 12 million users. So, it makes me wonder how many communities I would have to go to reach this number of users. That is why I use social media, because while we are working behind the scenes, reaching people online, there are also people who need this information as well as those who are online. And data says about 113 million Nigerians have access to mobile data and technology, and I think about 93 million of them have access to the internet. That’s a big number and it’s increasing daily. So, if about 100 million people have access to the internet, and they each tell one person what they have learnt from a post that they saw, then that’s a faster way to get to 200 million people.
Another reason I started using social media is because of the propagation of fake news. It’s easy for me to just sit back and watch people’s lives get worse, get decayed literally because of the amount of unverified information they digest daily. And it’s all around us where a lot of social media platforms are paying users for engagements. So, people can say anything just for engagement. So, why should the verified, trained professionals keep quiet when there is a tool for you to not just counter fake news but also to educate and empower people? Through social media, women have access to not just verified information, but also to communities where they can be themselves and have conversations that are normally taboos; confidential conversations. They can meet people who have gone through what they are going through.
What do you consider a major concern or challenge for women and their wellness?
I would say illiteracy, poverty, culture, religion, and every other thing follows. Socially, women are considered part of the vulnerable population marginalised and it’s a double-edged sword. For me, women are the strongest set of people in the world. And we all know it. Our society just needs to realise it. And I wouldn’t know whether that’s part of the reason there is just a system set to marginalise women from years back. Things are getting better but we can do more, and so I think these are the major challenges. There’s a high level of illiteracy in Nigeria and the statistics do not favour women and young girls. This illiteracy also fuels the culture. Culture is beautiful, but some of the cultures that we have do not help women’s health at all. There are a lot of taboo cultures. There’s a lot of misinformation. There are myths that have contributed adversely to women’s health. Religion affects both men and women and society as a whole; ours is a society that places a premium on religion. So, there’s a whole lot of religious bias towards women, not because they want to intimidate women but I think as a result of ignorance.
What key lessons have you learnt in your career journey?
I think the first thing is everybody is an asset. Never look down on anybody. Sometimes, you need a certain direction in life, a certain access or network. One of the things that have helped me is that constant yearn for learning. When I say remain teachable; also build your social capital, they are linked. The third thing is: Ensure you have a good social capital. The thing about good social capital is some people think it means the same as social climbing. You are not just building your social capital for what people can do to you. Ensure that you equip yourself with so much value that you are invaluable; people can’t do without you in certain circles. Also, pray and prioritise God.
What advice do you have for young women trying to get their feet and live their dreams?
Firstly, understand yourself. It’s not easy, but work on personal development. The way to understand yourself is by unabashed self-exploration. Don’t limit yourself early. I didn’t niche early. Even now, I am not totally niched to say that this is all I am going to be doing in life. I am still exploring. I believe humans are like rubber bands. We are very elastic. There’s a whole lot we can handle even as women. We have that capacity. So, develop yourself. Women who excel are women who are supported. And this support system is not just socially but also in family life, because when you are able to know, as a young woman, what you want to do and where you are going, you are able to identify certain red flags. Develop yourself enough so that you won’t be dependent on the validation of anybody including men. Build what you want to be and you will attract men and women, support systems that align with your life and this will be evident in your family life. Secondly, don’t compare your life with anybody; your life is peculiar. Also, prioritise your health.
