Our Health, Our Future
HEALTH IS WEALTH goes an age-long saying. A community, country, our world will only be as prosperous as the health of its people and its health systems. My name is Saeed Jumah, but most people call me Dr. Smyls (of course, the profile picture already revealed that much). I am privileged to be a part of the 1st UNLEASH Innovation Lab on the UN SDGs. I am a dentist based in a large community in Northern Nigeria.
My passion for health (especially dental health) is hard to explain without this casual, but reverberating conversation I had with an uncle of mine about 16 years ago. As a teenager then, I was sharing the exciting news with him on how I had just been granted admission to study Dental surgery in the University. As every good uncle would, he congratulated me and told me to study well so that as soon as I qualified as a dentist I could travel abroad to go and practice. This was because (in his words) “our people here in Nigeria, especially Northern Nigeria, do not value their teeth”. To a great extent he was right: millions of people in my community still used twigs or sand to clean their teeth; several others have never visited the dentist their entire lives, tooth decay was still treated with local concoctions or the teeth were just left to rot and break until pain became unbearable. These stark facts rather than deter me, spurred me to take on the challenge to improve dental health awareness, access to quality healthcare and better well being starting from my community.
Fast forward to 8 years after that advice, I returned to my community after school with a purpose: From youth orientation camps, to corporate organizations and business professionals, to schools and rural communities- I just had to make sure people were empowered with the right information to value their oral health (and in extension their general health) and make the right decisions in their attitude towards it. To gain wider reach, I started a weekly dental radio program reaching over 3 million people (rural communities included) providing free dental consultation, education and reorienting the minds of the people.
However, information is only as powerful as the individual’s desire and ability to act on it. A major barrier to accessing healthcare is finance and in order to achieve Universal Health Coverage, we need to move from intervention (most times, an expensive option) to prevention and maintenance of health. For instance, in my country only about 2 percent of Nigerians (over 160 million) are currently covered by health insurance scheme; meaning there is a staggering 60–70 percent of people left with no option but to pay out-of-pocket in order to access healthcare; it is not uncommon to hear of people dying because they had no money to pay for the right treatment when they needed it. Some families are left to choose between paying for healthcare direly needed by a loved one, or buying what the rest of the family would eat (sometimes, the only meal for that day).
Beyond health awareness promotion and free health services, more needs to be done to ensure that more people are able to access healthcare and stay healthy without going broke or dying. I feel highly privileged to have been selected among 1,000 talents from all around the world to be a part of the 1st UNLEASH Innovation Lab on the SDGs. As a dentist (which believe me, is an aspect of health which is still largely ignored in most developing countries), I am excited for the opportunity to co-create and collaborate with several other talents to create innovative solutions to ensure the goal of Health among the SDGs is met by 2030. For me, it s a great opportunity to draw from the diverse network of talents and UNLEASH partners to build disruptive solutions that will challenge and inspire more action in the way the world is working towards achieving the SDGs. It is time to UNLEASH!!!
