By Fareedat Taofeeq
Two 500 level medical students of Lagos State University College of Medicine, LASUCOM, Oluwananumi Dawodu and Akingbola Adewunmi, have bagged the Diana Award for going an extra mile in trying to create a positive change in the society
The Diana Award was established in memory of Diana, Princess of Wales, to honour young persons aged 9-25 years for their social action or humanitarian work. Oluwananumi Dawodu and Akingbola Adewunmi, both aged 23, from Lagos have been recognised by the Award board.
Adewunmi Akingbola is the founder of ‘HealthDrive Nigeria’, an initiative in the South West of Nigeria, which aims to raise awareness, test and vaccinate people against the deadly Hepatitis B virus. Adewunmi’s awareness-raising campaigns have reached a good number of people in the region itself, whilst also engaging national audiences through mass media.
On his part, Dawodu Oluwananumi, keen on curbing the spread of the virus, launched the ‘End Hepatitis’ project, which has helped over 1,500 people get screened and vaccinated against Hepatitis B. In response to the global pandemic in March 2020, Dawodu supervised a team of 20 volunteers to share information on how to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 virus, fielding over 1,000 calls daily.
Moreover, it should be recalled that Toluwalashe Soyemi a now 500 level student of LASUCOM was also a recipient of the same award for the previous year.
The student changemakers were globally recognized with the Diana Award as a result of their distinct and great desire to improve the society they live in despite being undergraduates.
What The Awards Entail
The Diana Awards recognizes
young people who are going above and beyond to change the world.
It is the most prestigious accolade a young person can receive in social and humanitarian works and is usually awarded in remembrance of the late Princess Diana of Wales for her efforts in addressing problems and implementing solutions she strongly believed in, and the award ceremony is always celebrated by the Duke of Sussex and Cambridge, Prince Harry and Williams, sons of late Princess Diana and Prince Charles and they’re the sixth and second in line of successions to the British throne.
The Nomination Process
Award recipients have been put forward by adults who know the young people in a professional capacity and recognised their efforts as a positive contribution to society. Through a rigorous nomination process, these nominators had to demonstrate the nominee’s impact in five key areas: Vision, Social Impact, Inspiring Others, Youth Leadership, and Service Journey.
There are 12 Diana Award Judging Panels representing each UK region or nation and a further three panels representing countries outside of the UK. Each panel consist of three judges; one young person, an education or youth work professional, and a business or government representative. The panels have an important main purpose: to determine which nominations from each UK region/nation/country will receive The Diana Award.
Nominations are judged using the Criteria Guide and Scoring Guide which have been created to measure the quality of youth social action.
REASON BEHIND CHOOSING HEPATITIS AMIDST OTHER PREVALENCE DISEASES
Both works of the recipients focus on the prevalence of Hepatitis in Nigeria.
According to them, Viral Hepatitis is quite interesting, and even though it is ubiquitous in Nigeria, and also the World Health Organization, WHO in 2019 named Nigeria as one of the countries with the highest prevalence of Hepatitis B in the world with Over 30 million currently infected and about 300,000 people dying annually from the disease, and yet, almost everyone lacks the slightest knowledge about it???
Hepatitis B has no cure but has a Vaccine, Hepatitis C has a cure but doesn’t have a vaccine and these two viral infections can segue from the active phase to chronic conditions and eventually culminate in liver cancer and other liver conditions.
Hepatitis is 6 times deadlier than HIV. It is a very scary yet interesting condition because it has managed to spread very well without anyone knowing about it hence its nickname “Silent Killer”.
Addressing the menace of Hepatitis was a battle and the fact that people aren’t aware of it, the high cost of the vaccine and lack of free Hepatitis B screening has already given the viral disease more power to win this battle but we will continue to do what we can to help the situation hence the reason behind why we decide to choose to centre on Hepatitis.
According to Akinwunmi, he was lucky to have been nominated and won the award. In his words, he said: "I was nominated by the recent LASU Best Graduating Student, Shotunde Oladimeji who believed that I was well eligible for the award and since I am engaged in community developmental works, I deserved to be recognized and celebrated. After he submitted my nomination, I got selected to be a 2021 Recipient of the award making me one of the two student recipients, one of the eight recipients in Nigeria and one of them about 20 recipients in Africa this year and one of the three LASU students to be a recipient of this prestigious award ever and I think it is safe to assume that, LASU is the only university in Nigeria that has three Diana Award recipients (all in the college of medicine, in the same class ), and no other university has a recipient as students"
However, Dawodu advice other students who wish to achieve such feat to think deep and long concerning every engagement they set out to do. "The race is a marathon and not a sprint. Till we all win, let's keep building"!.
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