2020 Danjuma Adda accomplished Public health expert on a mission to raise awareness about Hepatitis. Danjuma was infected with Hep B while in clinical rotations and then lost his own mother to the disease several years later. Even though Hepatitis kills more people per year than HIV/AIDS, it receives just a fraction of the global health funding. Danjuma is a leading voice for Hepatitis patients in Nigeria and uses his platform to advocate for the most vulnerable populations across Africa.
COVID-19 has highlighted a major challenge for many African countries to be able to access and distribute essential medicines to their populations. Danjuma raises concerns that the travel bans and other lockdown procedures have made it very difficult for medicines to be accessed by the people. He writes, “If we are not careful, hard fought advances against vaccine-preventable diseases, like polio, could be lost.”