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Meet Joshua Aniaku (MSc Global Health, 2021)
I am a recent graduate from the University of Health and Allied Sciences, Ghana with a Bachelor of Public Health degree. I have had the opportunity to work in rural and urban settings after my degree. My working experience had been to carry out surveillance for epidemic prone diseases mostly in rural settings of Ghana. I have also volunteered with some non-governmental organisations to assess nutritional status of school children and advocate for a change in diet in the Ghana School Feeding Program to help reduce malnutrition among the children.
Currently, I work in the Department of Public Health in the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital assisting in operational research, outbreak investigations; and the capacity building of community/public health nurses in the hospital. I also support the Quality Management Unit of my hospital to identify various opportunities for improvement and to design quality improvement interventions.
My decision to choose Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine was motivated by the high standard and repute of the school. LSTM has a great commitment to developing global health and research leaders in the field of tropical medicine. Current global health issues demand evidence-based policies and program implementation procedures to reduce disease burdens and protect health. LSTM’s MSc Global Health curriculum has modules to train students to acquire these competencies thus relates to my career goals. This I believed would provide me the needed competencies to be an expert in global health.
The scholarship has settled my tuition fees which I would not have been able to pay. I also have access to world class tutors who take their time to provide important feedback to my learning challenges. I also have access to learning platforms that are easy to navigate and can be modified to suit my learning needs. I have also been given the rare opportunity to learn and work at the same time without leaving my home country especially in the time of pandemic where most universities are closed in my home country.
My career aim is to become a global health expert providing evidence-based solutions through research especially in West Africa. LSTM will provide me the needed skills and competencies to becoming the global health expert I want to become. This will prepare me to be to work in all environments where my skills will be needed. The scholarship has also provided me the opportunity to meet different colleagues to network with them, learn from their experiences and build long term relationships with a focus on addressing global health issues.
I would like to use this opportunity to say thank you to the Farrington Hopkins Scholarship sponsor for funding my tuition fees. Without this funding I do not think I would have been part of this great institution. I really appreciate my funders for making this happen. This gesture also shows their believe in my potential to making significant contribution to global health and I thank them.