The Africa London Nagasaki (ALN) scholarship award has been of great assistance for me to achieve the master’s programme in public health. The studies at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine were well designed to suit most of the work type and research involved in environment and health. The modular choice after doing the general core ones for public health had led me into a deeper understanding on how to design disease intervention programmes and conduct the assessment of evidence on impact of health. These two areas were lacking on my knowledge which I feel are cardinal in policy formulation and cost effective utilization of resources which are limited.

The reputation regarding the school has already landed me a position of GIS officer at Akros Global Health which was part of the respondent organisation during my summer project. In my new work capacity, I will use the knowledge acquired from spatial epidemiology to provide technical support on the Water and Sanitation Health (WASH) programme to assist in the setup, implementation and maintenance of a GIS-integrated database.  DHIS2 has been chosen as the data management system to be used in this context; stakeholders from UNICEF, the Ministry of Local Government and Housing and Akros will be depending on this data management system for monitoring, evaluation and reporting.

In addition, I will assist Akros in conducting DHIS2 end-user trainings, paying particular attention to the data visualization components of this system: pivot tables, charting and GIS. Finally, I will still provide ad hoc support to the malaria elimination campaign which is being undertaken by Akros under the national malaria control programme with other partners.