Ghana president, John Dramani Mahama, has appointed Dr. Vida Nyagre Yakong as a Deputy Registrar of the Health Facilities Regulatory Agency (HeFRA).
HeFRA is a state-run bureau mandated to license all health facilities across the country as well as regulate and monitor their activities to ensure the services they deliver are of standard quality.
Dr. Yakong became the first ever Dean of the School of Nursing and Midwifery at the University for Development Studies (UDS) in northern Ghana in 2020.
She was re-elected in 2023 as the dean of that faculty for a second term of two years, and held the position until she was handed the latest appointment by the Mahama administration.
She rose from an underprivileged background in Nabdam, her home district in the Upper East region.
When she started her basic education, there was no electricity in her native Nyobok. And soon after she started going to school, her father withdrew her from the classroom following his friends’ assertion that it made no sense to educate a girl because she would end up living under the roof of another man (her future husband) and be eternally separated from her own roots by bearing his name.
While her father kept her away from school at a tender age, the girl who would become a PhD holder, a university dean and a top government appointee many years later was asked to be directing the family’s cattle as a shepherd girl around her village forests on a daily basis.
She eventually returned to school through the solo efforts of her elder sister, Philomena, after her father died.
How she became one of Ghana’s most educated people
Dr. Yakong continued her basic education at Winnamzoa Primary School in Bawku, Nangodi Primary School in Nabdam, Nangodi Middle School in her home district and Bolgatanga Technical Institute in the Upper East region.
She later obtained a certificate in Community Health Nursing at the Community Health Nursing Training School, Tamale, Northern Region, in 1992 and a certificate in State Registered Nursing at the Nursing Training College in Bolgatanga in 1999.
In 2003, she earned a Diploma in Nurse Practitioner at UDS in Tamale and Bachelor of Science in Nursing at the University of British Columbia, Okanagan (UBCO), Kelowna, BC, Canada, in 2004.
She further obtained a Master of Science in Nursing at the University of British Columbia, Canada, in 2008 and PhD in Interdisciplinary Studies (Medical Anthropology) at the University of British Columbia, Okanagan (UBCO), Canada, in 2014.
Dr. Yakong has at least 48 journal publications to her credit and has appeared as a keynote speaker at several national and international events and summits. She has also served on at least 24 boards and committees and she is currently a patron to several organisations and an external examiner to a number of institutions including the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), the University of Cape Coast and the Wisconsin international University College, Accra, among others.
She is a consultant to some state institutions and has won 19 awards including the Ministry of Health Nursing and Midwifery Excellence Award on Education and Research and the Thesis Excellence Award, University of British Columbia, Okanagan, BC, Canada.
Giving back to the community
Dr. Yakong has given an estimated 650 schoolchildren scholarship support in Nabdam alone since 2004. Thousands of needy women in the area have received livelihood assistance through a non-governmental organisation she founded in 2008— Ghana Rural Opportunities for Women (GROW).
In 2011, she constructed one Community-based Health Planning Services (CHPS) compound to promote access to health care at Nyobok. In 2017, she built a two-bedroom nurses’ quarters for that CHPS compound.
Dr. Yakong drilled a mechanised borehole for the Nyobok CHPS compound in 2016 and provided an improved latrine for the CHPS compound in 2014. She established a women’s skills training centre at Nyobok and a shea butter soap production enterprise for women groups at Nyobok.
In 2011, she helped register 215 people comprising the aged, orphans and people living with HIV/AIDS on to the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) and built a tailoring shop with 35 young women equipped with sewing machines in the community in 2016.
In April, 2015 she donated an ambulance to the Nyobok CHPS compound and offered 2,500 insecticide-treated nets (ITNs) to rural residents for malaria prevention. She also provided a grinding mill for the community and donated 102 donkeys and carts so far to various communities in Nabdam District as part of her initiative to build women’s income capacity.
Dr. Yakong provided 433 bicycles for rural women, men and schoolchildren to facilitate their movement and to support their economic ventures between 2012 and 2016. In January, 2011, she donated books and other assorted educational materials to selected educational institutions to support quality teaching and learning in the region. That same year, she supported some health facilities in the Upper East region with medical equipment and supplies for quality service delivery.
Dr. Yakong’s true story keeps inspiring young people, particularly in rural areas, proving that it makes a lot of sense to send girls to school— and keep them there.
One of the inspired youth was once heard as she repeatedly patted herself on the chest at a forum: “If nothing could stop Dr. Vida, nothing can stop me.”
Source: Edward Adeti/Media Without Borders/mwbonline.org/Ghana
Congratulations to such a great woman