Oncology nurse from Ghana wins global nursing award

A Ghanaian wife-and-mother, 24 years as a healthcare professional in her home country, and whose curiosity into why 70 per cent of the cases of the preventable cancer – most of the time – are diagnosed at their precarious stage – let her get into community engagements for the much-needed solutions, has been chosen as the fourth recipient of a UAE-borne international award.

From over 105,000 applications across 199 countries, Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital-National Radiotherapy Oncology and Nuclear Medicine Centre-Nursing Department head Naomi Oyoe Ohene Oti, is the fourth woman and the second African to win the three-year-old “Aster Guardians Global Nursing Award.”

The ceremonies were held in Dubai on Monday with chief guest the UAE Minister of Tolerance and Co-Existence Sheikh Nahyan Bin Mubarak Al Nahyan.

Guests included Diplomatic Community officials, 2024 winner Philippine Army consultant Maria Victoria Juan NC (Reserve), Miss Universe 1994 Sushmita Sen and Indian Ambassador to the UAE Sunjay Sudhir.

From the press conference, jury members Asia Healthcare Holdings executive chairman Vishal Bali, International Diabetes Foundation president elect Dr Niti Pall, Officer of the Order of the British Empire awardee Dr Peter Carter, University of Technology (Sydney, Australia) adjunct professor Dr. James Buchan, and Botswana former health minister Professor Sheila Tlou, called for global support to all nurses worldwide.

The five who bestowed the 2022 award to Kenyan nurse-epidemiologist Anna Qabale Duba - whose advocacies include the fight against cultural practices namely early marriages and female genitalia mutilation - verdicted that Oti is the most qualified to receive the prestigious award that goes with a $250,000.00 (Dhs 918,231.25/2,612,807.18 Ghanaian Cedi) because her cancer community projects, encompassing care, compassion, and continuing learning education and training are replicable in any country.

They implied that fence-sitting leads to the perilous downfall of local to international quality healthcare.

From the “State of the World’s Nursing 2025" of the World Health Organisation (WHO): “Consolidating information from the WHO’s 194 Member States, the evidence indicates global progress in reducing the nursing workforce shortage from 6.2 million in 2020 to 5.8 million in 2023, with a projection to decline to 4.1 million by 2030. Approximately 78 per cent of the world’s nurses are concentrated in countries just 49 per cent of the global population.”

In his awarding ceremonies online message, WHO director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, underscored the “urgency” to long-lasting “massive investments in nursing education, job security, leadership development and working conditions through informed data, training by equity and inspired by the courage and compassion of nurses.”

He stated: “The global nursing workforce has grown, they are unequally distributed. Countries that make up less than half of the world’s population are almost 80 per cent of the world’s nurses like in Africa and the Eastern Mediterranean Region. These inequalities affect communities on a daily basis.”

Bali expressed gratitude for Oti’s commitment to solutions addressing cancer that he said, has remained to be a global menace: “We are still four million nurses short worldwide. There are only a few countries which are actually training nurses for the entire world. A lot more work has to be done in terms of creating more nurses workforce.”

Buchan said: “No nurses. No healthcare. Insufficient nurses. Insufficient healthcare. We are short of nurses worldwide. We need to be doing collectively all that we can to support more people coming into the profession and keep those who are already in the profession as long as they want to.”

Pall who has worked in universal healthcare worldwide, said: “There is a 60 million healthcare shortage by 2030 including nurses. The development of nurses, particularly in the low to medium income countries is the strongest single force. This award encourages that.”

Carter stressed that all countries face challenges in their respective healthcare systems with every “discipline” with a “shortage of staff,” thereby “40 million people do not have access to healthcare.”

Referencing to the distinguished professional qualifications of the Top 10 candidates who have evolved into nurses with up-scaled credentials with individualised community-driven purposes, Carter added: “This award has shown that there are different ways of managing healthcare irrespective of race, religion, country and nationality. Health is a global issue.”

Tlou was happy that Oti would be able to carry on her advocacies.