My friend Joseph Ana, who has died aged 73, spent the best part of two decades in the UK working for the NHS as a urologist and then as a GP. But his heart was always in his native Nigeria, to where he returned to become a health commissioner. He used the knowledge and experience he had gained in the UK to help rebuild faith in the local healthcare system, overseeing, among other things, improvements in vaccination rates and the introduction of a state-wide ambulance service.
Joseph was born in Zaria in Nigeria, to Onun Onebieni Uguana Ana, who worked on the railways, and Ubu Ana, his first wife. The family compound was in Ikot-Ana in Cross River state, and his family were kingmakers, choosing a king from among the two royal families.
Joseph fought in the Biafran war as a teenager, and his schooling was interrupted as a result. After the war he restarted his education at Duke Town school in Calabar. Following the death of his two older brothers, he became the head of an extensive family.
He graduated from the University of Nigeria Medical School in 1978 and worked as a junior doctor at St Margaret’s hospital in Calabar. He then had a surgical residency at the University of Calabar teaching hospital from 1980 to 1982 before deciding to travel to the UK to extend his knowledge.
His wife, Arit Akak, a public health nutritionist, whom he had married in 1977, and their three children joined him in 1984, and he worked for his first 10 years as a doctor and urologist in various hospitals in the south-east of England. He became a GP in 1992, joining a practice in Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire, where he was mindful that his work in primary care would be useful on any return to Africa.
That return came in 2004 when he was headhunted to become health commissioner in Cross River state, a region with a population of three million but only 72 doctors and where one in five children died before they were five and one in 100 women died in childbirth. Only a fifth of the population was vaccinated, and 12% were infected with HIV.
Joseph worked on a 12-part clinical governance programme that addressed issues such as funding, education and staff training, as well as patient empowerment. By the end of his tenure, in 2008, 80% of the population were vaccinated and the prevalence of HIV had halved.
After stepping down as health commissioner Joseph became a consultant, offering courses on healthcare management topics in many African countries. He also advised the Nigerian government and became chair of the World Health Organization’s technical advisory group on integrated care in primary, emergency, operative and critical care. He was still its chair at his death.
Joseph was a man of action with a deep Christian faith who would rarely take no for an answer.
He is survived by Arit, their daughter, Mbang, son Onebieni, and five grandchildren, Ubu, Kwadjo, Arit, Erioluwa and Ndemana. Another daughter, Ubu, died in 2007.
