2021, Year of Hope and Resilience

Dear Fellow Nigerian Medical Social Workers,

I bring to you a 2021 full of hope and resilience to us and patients we serve. All over the world, year 2020 has been an unpredictable journey through the pandemic, protests and many more difficulties that had made living life quite hard for people across the globe. As we say goodbye to 2020 and welcome 2021, we do it with new hope. This has been a challenging year around the globe and has affected us as Medical Social Workers.

Making a New Year’s resolution is a chance for many people to set goals and make changes to improve their overall well-being. As we step forward into 2021, I am wondering if our new resolutions will be different this year with a new approach on what is really important.

In spite of all these challenges, we had excellent blog contributions from our colleagues all over the six (6) Geo-political zones in Nigeria. Young and newly employed medical social workers’ spotlight was another milestone for us as a professional association. We had an excellent virtual Socio-Scientific conference with presentation from three internationally renowned speakers two Nigerian and a Nigerian-Irish Social Worker from Dublin, Ireland. The speakers spoke on topics related to safety measure for Medical Social Workers in Nigeria, ethical shift for Medical Social Workers during COVID-19 and intervention services for vulnerable groups during COVID-19. The conference had over 51 participants in attendance from Nigeria and four participants from United Kingdom, India and Indonesia. Our Scheme of Service is already been handled by the technical committee of the Office of the Head of Service of the Federation.

I would like to encourage you to look at this year’s resolutions in a different way as we take it in a new direction. We have all been through a tremendous change already, so I would invite you to give yourself credit for the deeds already done.

So now, as we embrace the upcoming year, 2021, let us all be positive and cheery with shining spirits and aspirations for the future. We should vow to not let the negative times affect us in looking forward to the future and working hard to achieve our dreams and ambitions. Do not forget to follow NCDC safety guidelines for the prevention of COVID-19.

So, let us all embrace the New Year with much-needed hopes, resilience and happiness.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

Alhaji Alhassan Abubakar Bichi

National President, Association of Medical Social Workers of Nigeria (AMSWON)