IBADAN, Nigeria (VOICE OF NAIJA) – Africa faces an uphill battle as the need to address healthcare inequality and lack of qualified healthcare workforce continue developing on a global scale, but ‘Aproko Doctor’ seems to be up to the task.
The Nigerian who is dedicated to ensuring good health in an ‘easy to learn’ manner so that
optimal health is achieved by everyone is none other than Dr. Chinonso Fidelis Egemba popularly known as Aproko Doctor.
Nonso is a healthcare and lifestyle influencer with more than 1.8million Twitter followers and 541,000 Instagram followers.
He uses ‘storytelling to create a healthier Africa’.
For a professional in the medical field, Aproko Doctor has shown that passion can be diversified into multiple areas.
A practicing medical doctor, he has built up a very formidable followership across different social media platforms.
On Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, the content he churns out daily cuts across health, sociopolitical reforms, entrepreneurship and human rights activism.
He has been cheered on as one of the leaders of a new reform in society in Africa, in a couple of years.
Born on 26 October, 1990, Nonso originally hails from Imo State in the south eastern part of Nigeria.
He graduated as a medical doctor from the Nnamdi Azikiwe University (UNIZIK) in 2015.
Nonso was in his fourth year at Nnamdi Azikiwe University when he and some of his medical student colleagues helped diagnose a stroke patient.
The diagnosis was a big deal at the time and the attention they received suggested promising careers ahead.
They even kept tabs on their patient’s progress. But two years on, the patient succumbed to another stroke. It was a devastating blow to the aspiring medics.
The sobering event also marked a shift in their thinking about medicare.
The question of how to reduce “avoidable deaths” by creating health awareness among ordinary citizens became an overriding concern – at least, for one of them.
Nonso had given the issue a great deal of thought by the time he graduated, in 2015.
Instead of seeking the limelight and a high-profile practice, Nonso went in a different direction; one which soon gave rise to his nickname – the “Aproko” doctor.
Aproko is a pidgin word used to describe a “busybody”.
In 2016, Aproko Doctor was employed as a resident doctor at the Imo State University Teaching Hospital, Owerri.
He started Aproko Doctor in 2017, an online health focused outlet aimed at giving health nuggets and tips.
Using memes, skits, pidgin, and relatable slang, Nonso continues to embrace his role as the friendly (and sometimes nosy) “neighbourhood doctor” that everyone can reach out to via direct messages across social media platforms.
His peers, who believed he was demeaning the profession, rebuked him.
Some of his colleagues called him the ‘Google Doctor’ while others said he is wasting his time and criticized him for not using medical jargon in his messages.
Over time, the criticism from his peers has died off, with some of them even embracing Aproko Doctor’s initiative.
Aproko Doctor is constantly working to counter health misinformation by using unconventional methods to attack medical ignorance.
He is an advocate for quality accessible health care, mental health and public health care.
Aproko Doctor hopes to see all these available to people irrespective of their stations in life, gender and sexual orientation.
His experience as a child also had a direct influence on his chosen path.
His father was a car dealer, while his mother sold Akara (bean cake) on the roadside in Lagos to make ends meet.
In 2007, he was detained in a hospital as his parents struggled to raise a medical bill after he underwent surgery for intestinal obstruction during his first year at university.
“Imagine staying in a hospital for weeks because you had bills that had not been paid. At that moment, I swore I will never be poor but will also extend a hand of assistance to others in such situations,” Nonso stated in a tweet.
Despite being a man of many creative parts, the medical field still remains his focal point as he believes that it is the key to all-around balance in life.
Aproko Doctor has won awards in recognition of his efforts in public health education of the average Nigerian.