Dr. Marcellina Tomi Coker is a Consultant Obstetrician and Gynaecologist with thirty two years of experience in the United Kingdom National Health Service.
A Fellow of the Royal College Of Obstetrics and Gynaecology and an alumni of Harvard Business School. Tomi is a dynamic strategic healthcare administrator of African Descent based in UK, driven by the passion to make a difference in maternal health in her native country of Nigeria, she took a career break from the UK to take on the position of Commissioner for Health in Ogun State in 2020.
In the last 3 years she has successfully championed the delivery of proactive, holistic, and patient-centred Healthcare in Ogun State. She is a silent operator who when thrown in at the deep end six weeks after relocating to Nigeria from the UK.
She gallantly led the team that responded to the first two cases of COVID-19 in Sub-Saharan Africa and her state recorded one of the lowest mortality rate of 82! This earned her and her team a national award as the best State in South West Nigeria on COVID-19 vaccination.
As a disruptive leader with a Big Picture Thinking perspective, she transformed the primary care landscape using Innovation and technology to tackle decades of inequality in access to quality healthcare in the rural area and remote parts of Ogun State.
She did this by deploying over 80 tricycle ambulances as appropriate technology in rural Nigeria, electronic medical records to improve data collection and quality, revitalizing primary health facilities to provide a conducive environment and improved patient experience, and providing free insurance for women identified as poor from the social register and their babies for the first six months in a project named “IBIDERO” ( Birth made Easy) to address the unacceptable maternal and neonatal mortality rates observed in Nigeria earning her and the State the Primary Healthcare Leadership Award in Southwest Nigeria conferred by Bill and Melinda Gates and UNICEF.
She continues to drive innovative responses to closing the inequality gap in healthcare delivery in Ogun State by collaborating with people of African Descent in Diaspora leveraging on organisations like Association of Nigerian Physicians in the Americas (ANPA) and Royal College of Obstetrics and Gynaecology Nigerian Liaison Group UK to close the local skill gap.
Well done!!
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