Dr Saeed Jumah is a beneficiary of the Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI) grant. He provides dental services and awareness to his community in Kano State. Prior to Covid-19 and the promotion of physical distancing guidelines that ensued, a normal day for Dr Jumah would have been one-on-one consultations, procedures like dental extractions, root canal treatments, etc. – with each case treated as it comes. With the increasing rate of infection in Kano State, Dr Jumah has adjusted operations in line with global guidelines and preventative protocol.
Hence, from intense infection control practice at his facility to appointment spacing – ensuring only 1 patient in the waiting room; from rescheduling non-emergency procedures to focusing on emergency services; from implementing more telephone consultations to a suspension of physical gathering at his awareness campaigns; Dr Jumah is not letting his guards down in the fight to stop the spread of the deadly virus. He has also adopted online training of interns while also working at commencing mobile clinic services. He is also considering the conversion of his training materials to videos for online delivery. YALI is the United States’ signature effort to invest in the next generation of African leaders, providing grant funding to launch and expand their businesses across Africa.