“You were born with potential.
You were born with goodness and trust. You were born with ideals and dreams. You were born with greatness.
You were born with wings.
You are not meant for crawling, so don’t.
You have wings.
Learn to use them and fly.”
Rumi
Rumi’s perception of greatness and his inspiring metaphor of the wings with which we can fly, lay a solid base from which we can uncover the goldmine that has become of Dr. Zainab Kwaru: one of northern Nigeria’s most refined medical practitioner. She comes across as a very humane and calm personality; a soft spoken medical genius, whose backgrounds, typify what a blend of will and passion can do to a person.
Having worked as the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)-supported North West Zonal Technical Officer (ZTO), under the Office of the Senior Special Assistant to the President (OSSAP) on MDG’s Conditional Grants Scheme to Local Governments (CGS-LG) programme, one finds in this well-travelled lane, trails of a medical doctor, who commits her life and energy to ensuring that Arewa and the world at large, gets the best possible medical care.
As the Team Lead on the United Kingdom/DFID-funded flagship programmes that included Partnerships for Transforming Health Systems (PATHS2) and Strengthening Nigeria’s Response (SNR) to HIV/AIDS among others, Dr. Kwaru left spectacular footprints in the parchments of history. In these positions, she played catalytic roles in leading a team of programme officers and experts to provide technical backstop, coordination and institution for Maternal, Newborn, and Child Health (MNCH) interventions, health systems strengthening, and HIV control activities with focus on service delivery, capacity development, research, data management, and commodities supply chain management.
She equally went ahead to serve as a Consultant on various multi-sector strategic and operational plan development initiatives at the Federal and State levels; stints during which she contributed immensely to the establishment and strengthening of key health and related agencies in the 7 States of the North West Geo-political Zone, contributing immeasurably to the processes that led to the passage into law, Acts establishing the Kaduna State Primary Health Care Development (SPHCDA) and HIV/AIDS Control Agencies (KADSACA), among others.
Further to these attainments, Zainab has chaired and is a member of various Government and Civil Society working groups and committees at the Federal and State levels.
She is the Chair, Board of Trustees of the Education as Vaccine (EVA) NGO; member of the National Steering Committee on Neglected Tropical Diseases (NSC-NTD); and Chair, sub-committee on Advocacy and Resource Mobilization of the NSC-NTD, among others.
In her stride to improve capacity and deepen her expertise, she has attended various professional development programmes and courses in management, leadership, and research within and outside of Nigeria.
Dr. Zainab Kwaru is currently a Consultant Public Health Physician with well over twenty years’ considerable work experience managing and leading public health programmes and other related interventions in Nigeria. She is a 2012 Alumni of Flinders University, Gender Consortium, Adelaide, South Australia, where she obtained a fellowship certificate in Gender and Development for African Women in Leadership. She is a Lecturer with the Department of Community Medicine, College of Medicine, in the Kaduna State University (KASU), where she continues to contribute as a trainer, researcher, gender and health management expert and facilitator for various bodies, groups and institutions.
Presently, she has been assigned to serve as the Project Coordinator of the Kaduna State’s World Bank-funded Accelerating Nutrition Results in Nigeria (ANRiN). She is the President-elect of Medical Women’s Association of Nigeria (MWAN), Kaduna State Chapter in this current Biennium and will be sworn in as the President for the 2021 to 2023 Biennium at the MWAN AGM and Investiture ceremony coming up on 27th November 2021.
This happily married Consultant Public Health Physician, blessed with lovely children, reminds us once more that dreams do come true. Being an ADSIAN, we are proud of her. Her noteworthy attainments, her distinctive page in the history of our shared human expedition, and her devotion when duty calls, bloom in the Sahara as that symbol of hope for a new northern Nigeria.
She exudes the scent of a thoroughly manicured flower bed, replete with the colourful possibilities of a beautiful life, where will interfaces with the steam of courage, commitment and unflinching resolve. In her we behold the possibilities of the rise of female medical practitioners in northern Nigeria. Young ladies, who prompted by passion and given the needed support and encouragement, will go on to set matchless records to inspire posterity.
Today, we celebrate a quintessence of brains, beauty and brawn: Dr. Zainab Kwaru. A delectable icing on the cake of public health, a staggering epitome of excellence and sagacity, a woman of uncommon foresight and innovative perspicuity, and a pride of Arewa. ADSI is indeed, a home to some of Arewa’s finest minds.
Join us in ADSI today, as we sacrifice to make life better for our brothers and sisters, with hopes that our interventions will remind someone of their innate potential and capacities, so they can soar to heights unknown.
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