Board Of Trustees

He is a Principal Medical Laboratory Scientist/Quality Officer at Maitama District Hospital Abuja. He holds Bachelor of Medical Laboratory Science of the University of Nigeria Nsukka and a Master’s degree in Parasitology of the University of Abuja, Nigeria.

He is an experienced, vibrant and highly motivated medical laboratory scientist, who is focused and enthusiastic. He possesses very vast capacity in facility management in both public and private settings and has good knowledge of medical laboratory quality management system essentials. He is highly exposed and innovative with ability to perform well as part of a team towards achieving challenging objectives and deadlines. He is married with four children and is able to speak English, Igbo, Hausa and Yoruba fluently. He is also the current Chairman, Medical Laboratory Scientists Association of Nigeria, FCT Chapter

Dr. Ugbena Richard has 18 years’ experience of medical practice in Nigeria, masters’ degree in public health, a fellow of medical college public health, and more than 7 years’ experience working as HIV/AIDS M&E specialist and project management with both CDC and USAID in Nigeria. In 2013, he provided technical assistance to NACA to build the capacity of state M&E officers on the use of DHIS database for reporting. He attended numerous trainings on project  management, M&E, surveillance and research.

He is a Fellow of the West Africa College of Physicians and a Public Health Practitioner with over 15 years field experience in Maternal and Child Health, HIV/AIDS programming, Malaria, TB control and Family Planning  with strong ability to provide programmatic and leadership direction in women/child health and rural development programs.  He is a very intelligent team player, offering proven technical leadership, mentoring skills and exceptional problem solving abilities in facilitating sustainable participation of marginalized groups in local development initiatives, using the rights based mechanism.

He is well experienced   on issues of HIV/AIDS and Development with outstanding ability to offer trainings on HIV/AIDS Mainstreaming, HIV Counseling and Testing, Home Based Care, Strategic Behavior Change, Transformational Leadership, etc.

Over the last 9 years, on the PEPFAR grant, Dr. Gobir has functioned in technical, programmatic and managerial capacities at senior management levels under the public health development programs. In his capacity as the Technical lead for the University of Maryland TB/HIV Program in Nigeria, he facilitated the introduction of mobile diagnostic radiological technique that resulted in intensified TB case findings in one of the states where he worked. In addition, he facilitated the commencement of the construction of a Bio safety level 3 laboratory for TB diagnosis in Ebonyi state through a twining relationship with the Medical Research Council Gambia, an effort that the National TB program of Nigeria is currently leveraging on with its active effort towards the fight against Tuberculosis.

Furthermore, he led multiple teams of young, inexperienced clinical staff comprising of doctors, nurses and community based specialist to activating hospitals as comprehensive HIV/AIDS service providers across 16 states of Nigeria and also built their capacities in mentoring skills as part of follow up technical assistance to these hospitals. These activities complemented PEPFAR and government of Nigerian’s effort in scale out and scale up of sustainable HIV/AIDS services in the country. As a public health practitioner on the AIDS Relief and CHARIS grants, he trained and mentored 70 Nigerian Physicians and many other health care workers in TB/HIV management and anti-retro-viral therapy across 16 states of the federation including hard to reach/limited access areas of Taraba and the volatile regions including Delta, Kaduna and Kano states, an efforts that resulted in a remarkable improvement in enrollment and treatment outcomes of HIV infected patients enrolled on the program.

A public Health Practitioner of over 15 years, he is currently a Project Director at JAPIGO.