I am a 28-year-old man from Nigeria, a doctor, and I am currently serving as the Director of www.XXXX.org promoting medical outreach. I am confident that your program at XXXX University is the optimal master's program for preparing for a career in Health Administration. I want to contribute towards the building of an efficient, affordable, and reliable health care system in my country. Primarily, I hope to contribute towards making health care in my country affordable.
Nevertheless, I am also convinced that thinking about health care as a business is also our only sustainable, long-term hope for progress. Among our principal challenges in Nigeria is an acute shortage of health administration professionals. Doctors must be the administrators of our health care facilities on top of their other duties, even though they have neither the time nor the training to do so. Thus, I am applying to your distinguished program because our country is in desperate need of health care administrators for our health care systems to function more efficiently.
I plan to devote my life to contributing towards the building of an efficient, affordable, and reliable health care system in my country. I hope to use the knowledge and tools that I will gain by completing your distinguished program to train health care professionals in Nigeria to be better health care administrators. My long-term goal is to occupy administrative positions in both private and government operated health care facilities.
I am an extremely hard worker and my efforts have recently been recognized by the government of Nigeria for the excellence of my volunteer initiatives; I was awarded a Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Honours Award from the Minister of State this past February 14th, 2013. Building upon this and other achievements here in Nigeria, completing your program will optimally equip me for a daunting task, contributing towards not only improving health care in Nigeria but making it more affordable as well.
At the center of my interest in focusing on health care administration is my desire not only to make health care more affordable, but to do so precisely by making health care facilities profitable through the streamlining of both private and government owned health care operations. Most of our health care facilities in Nigeria are grossly mismanaged by professionals who are very poorly trained and given little to no direction.
I recently completed a series of volunteer health activities in Kwali on behalf of a local Area Council here in Abuja, Nigeria. I tagged the volunteer project: Kwali Health Project (KHP). KHP involved free medical exercises in various rural communities in Kwali and the donation of a 5-room health center to the most health deprived communities. This 10-month volunteer health project was completed this past January 2013 culminating with the commissioning of the health center (http://www.facebook.com/XXXX).
I completed my medical training at the University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital in Enugu, graduating in 2010. Then I did my one-year internship in a health facility in Abuja and finished in February of 2012. The following month I began my one-year National Youth Service (NYSC) Program in March (Batch A) with three weeks Orientation at the Kubwa camp in Abuja.
I have always had a strong passion to help those that are in need and use the skills I have as a medical doctor to help those who are in desperate need of medical care. When I performed my 3-week orientation for the NYSC Program, I was posted to the Kwali Area Council. I was especially happy about my post because I knew that health services were very much needed in support of the Area Councils. At last, I found myself with a concrete opportunity to fulfill my dreams. In addition to participating in all the activities, I also volunteered at the camp clinic, attending to ailing corps members and NYSC officials. I also participated in the Variety Day March where I represented my platoon, and our display took third place. Serving in Kwali was my own way of giving back to the country that had given me my education and my profession. My greatest joy comes in service and have become a physician because I wanted to make as positive an impact/contribution as possible during my service year. For the first few weeks in Kwali serving in the primary health care center, I interacted with everyone that I could and volunteered for free medical outreach in the surrounding communities. I immediately began applying all I that I had learned in our orientation sessions. Soon, I was also hard at work drawing up a proposal on how to have a positive impact on my host community and I tagged it The Kwali Health Project. I submitted my proposal to about 12 Non-Governmental Organizations in the city and five of them have been supportive.
One NGO in particular, XXXX.org, took special interest in my proposal and played a key role in all phases of the project implementation (from planning to execution). They also provided me with major financial support. XXXX stands for Health Advocacy Promotion and Partnership by Youths in Nigeria. This is a flagship name of The GUIHDE Initiative, an NGO dedicated to increasing youth involvement in healthcare development and advocacy. It is worthwhile to note that the bulk of the funds used in executing this project came as free will donations from well-meaning Nigerians.
The Kwali Project commenced in April 2012 and ended In January of 2013. The primary Objective of this project was to improve the health profile of the Kwali people in sustainable ways and contribute towards the attainment of the Millennium Development Goals, a series of health-related goals. We provided the people with health education designed to immediately confront some of the principal challenges: HIV/AIDS & TB, Safe water/Food, MDGs 4 & 5, Malaria. We also performed a series of health exercises, such as de-worming, distributed mosquito nets, and trained health workers. I developed monthly health education topics that included discussions of Lassa fever, family planning, safe food as well as water, and immunization. We held general health checkups as well as diabetes and hypertension screenings.
The first major medical outreach that I volunteered for, organized by the Nigerian Christian Corps Federation, was for Fugbe in Kundu ward a rural community which is extremely far from Kwali town. In preparation for our mission, we held sessions for our corps members along with various members of the community in Kwali town. I organized all our discussions while I attended to the various ailments of members of the community. The reduction of child and infant mortality, along with maternal mortality from childbirth, was one of central areas of special focus. The Head of the Health Department of Kwali Area Council, Dr XXXX expressed his immense appreciation for my initiative.
After completing your distinguished master's program in Health Administration, I will be very anxious to return home to Nigeria and put everything that I have learned to exceptionally beneficial use.
I thank you for considering my application to your program.
MHA Statement of Purpose Examples