Catherine Ojo

Catherine Oluwatoyin Ojo qualified as a midwife in 1983 because of her desire to care for women and children. She also has nursing specialty training in Family Planning, Paediatric Nursing and Advanced Diploma in Public Administration.

Currently, Catherine works as a midwife at the Ahmadu Bello University Teaching Hospital (ABUTH) in Zaria in Northern Nigeria, a public tertiary institution and a major referral center. As part of her clinical work, Catherine works in the Special Care Baby Unit (SCBU), where she is the chief nursing officer in charge. As a paediatric nurse, she has been trained in Essential Newborn Care (ENC), newborn resuscitation, and care of premature babies. Her work has traverses several hospitals in the past two decades.

Catherine is involved in educating both younger midwives and counseling parents of newborn babies on recognition of danger signs in their newborn babies. Her qualification as a nurse counselor enables her to counsel nurses whenever they go through job related difficulties and she is also involved in counseling patients. Her compassion for her co-workers drives her to organise training for them. For example, she has organised training workshops on Kangaroo Mother Care in Kaduna state for nurses and midwives; and was trained on newborn resuscitation during the recent 2011 Paediatric Association of Nigeria Conference. She has facilitated training of health workers from Kaduna state on Community Based Newborn Care (CBNC) and prevention of mother to child transmission of HIV. She encourages and mentors upcoming student nurses/midwives who are often times posted to ABUTH for clinical experience as well as mentoring nurses and midwives to be fellows of West African college of nursing.

She is currently involved in a PEPFAR research work on how to take care of the HIV exposed infants. Other research she has been involved in includes the role of a paediatric nurse in reduction of neonatal mortality and a research study on conjoined twin’s nutrition, monitoring and outcome of management. She is also a fellow of the West African College of Nursing in the faculty of maternal and child health.