It was a moment filled with mixed feelings as the outgoing President of the Nigerian Association of Pharmacists & Pharmaceutical Scientists in the Americas (NAPPSA) Dr Leo Egbujiobi gave the stewardship of his two years tenure at the 13th Annual Scientific Conference & Exposition of NAPPSA, held at the Westin Buckhead, Alanta, Georgia, United States.
Egbujiobi, who appreciated all executives of his cabinet and board of trustees that assisted in formulating concepts and overseeing those concepts said it has been a great two year of service.
”We believe that NAPPSA was founded on the tripod of community pharmacists, clinical and academic pharmacists, physical, chemical and regulatory scientists, while allied health practitioners are similarly an important part of NAPPSA. We have been guided by these principles in trying to add value to the tremendous amount of work done by my predecessors”, he stated.
While he highlighted progress made by his administration in advancing the course of the association, he said the work is not finished, as they have tried to lay the foundation for the next generation of NAPPSA.
He urged the incoming president to continue from where he stopped, in collaborating with the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA); Pharmaceutical Society of Nigeria (PSN); Association of Nigerian Physicians in the Americas (ANPA) and Nigerian Association of Nurses in North America (NANNA) in ensuring stability among the three principal players in the Nigerian healthcare delivery system.
Egbujiobi also stressed the need to generate more revenue for the association, saying the newly reconstituted Foundation Board should be empowered with a director, whose responsibility will be to increase NAPPSA’s revenue.
For the incoming president of NAPPSA, Dr Anthony Ikeme, he expressed delight in service the association, noting that he remains indebted to the founding members for their intuition and vision in brining pharmaceutical and healthcare professionals from all walks of life under one umbrella organisation, NAPPSA.
Ikeme, who sought for the cooperation of all members, stated that there are more frontiers to overcome in spite of the previous accomplishments of the association. “The good works that NAPPSA does in the United States and Nigeria must be viewed alongside the obstacles we had to overcome to accomplish these great deeds”, he emphasised.
Thus, he charged all members to rise to lift the association to the next level of progress, by forging greater partnership with likeminded groups in homeland, knowing that great nations are built when the diaspora and homeland intersect to form a seamless bond for progress. “The straight-line that exists today between the Silicon Valley in California and Bangalore in India is a lesson we must learn”, he said.
