During this time of COVID19, we at MMEG are reminded of the substantial proportion of support we have given to women in the health arena over the years. In our nearly 40-year history MMEG has provided more than a fifth of its 445 grants, to women studying private and public health. We have supported 98 grantees in their pursuit of degrees in specializations including nursing, medicine, obstetrics, physiotherapy, public health, pediatrics, microbiology, epidemiology, neurology, immunology, occupational therapy and molecular and cell biology among others.
These women in the medical profession later become nurses, doctors, researchers, professors and public health officials for hospitals, governments and universities across the world.
While many of the grantees in the health sector are working on the front lines of the COVID-19 fight; others carry on with their work and/or their research despite the virus. These are women like Mainga Moono Banda (2009 Grantee) who is a Research Specialist for UNICEF in Nigeria; Morenike Akpo (2009 Grantee) who is Director of Peerless Hospital and Wellness in Nigeria; Rana Obeidat (2010 Grantee) who is the Centre Director of Pharmaceutical Research at the Jordan University of Science and Technology; Sarah Elaraby (2017 Grantee) who is a Graduate Research Assistant of the Centre of Humanitarian Health, John Hopkins University; Kerry Kalweit (2017 Grantee) a General Manager at Youth With Diabetes; and Fatoumatta Darboe (2017 Grantee) who is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow for the Medical Research Council of Gambia Unit at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.
Still other grantees serve by providing leadership as professors teaching the next generation at esteemed universities such as: Georgetown University Medical Center (Dr. Nadu Tuakli, Assistant Professor, 1984 Grantee), Washington State University (Kawkab Shishani, Associate Professor of Nursing, 2003 Grantee), the University of California (Patience Afulani, Assistant Professor, Epidemiology & Biostatistics, 2012 Grantee), the University of Jaffna in Sri Lanka (Ramya Kumar, Lecturer, Department of Community and Family Medicine, 2014 Grantee); and the International University of Management in Namibia (Hilma Shikwambi, Emergency Obstetric and Newborn Care Trainer, 2014 Grantee).
Regardless of where they apply their efforts these days, we want to give a big THANK YOU to all MMEG grantees in the medical and health field. We appreciate your work every day, but especially today when it is so needed and useful…and for the future.
