Structured diaspora GP placements delivering measurable improvements in Nigerian primary care.
Nigeria's primary care crisis is deepening while the diaspora of clinicians who could help it grows every year. Public health spending sits at roughly 4% of the national budget well short of the 15% Abuja Declaration target and the clinicians most likely to leave are often the experienced ones who train and supervise others. Pada turns that outward flow into a structured, repeatable channel back in.
Baseline assessment, project scoping and local team co-design at the host facility.
Delivery of the quality-improvement project — audit, clinical training, protocol development.
Results review, documentation, and remote support of local champion enabled to sustain the change.
A 12-month pilot deploying 3–4 UK-based Nigerian GPs across four host facilities in Lagos and Abuja built to establish the evidence base for scale-up, institutional recognition, and future government partnership.
Discovery surveys with UK-based Nigerian GPs and host facilities; organisational setup; host MoUs; GP application and selection; continued engagement with stakeholders.
Three-week QI placements delivered; peer learning exchange launched; mentoring pairs established; MEL data collected throughout.
Cohort debrief, outcome data analysis, funder impact reports, pilot evaluation published, and Year 2 planning begins.
Mentoring follow-ups at 1, 3 and 6 months post-placement sustain each UK–Nigeria pairing beyond the three-week engagement.
In-principle support for the pilot phase.
Positions Pada within the global health workforce agenda.
Provides professional legitimacy within the Nigerian and UK diaspora medical community.
Supports dissemination of the discovery survey and co-promotes the GP application call to eligible doctors.
Delivery partners: nominating a project lead, providing access, and agreeing a defined QI project with the Pada team.
A diversified, milestone-based funding base spanning corporate CSR, health philanthropy and diaspora contributions.
A UK and Nigeria-based practising family physician and global health expert with over 25 years of clinical, strategic and advisory experience across the NHS, Nigeria, South Africa, the Caribbean and the wider Global South. She trained at UCL, holds an MSc in Global Health Policy from LSHTM, and spent over a decade as Strategy and Clinical Director of Primary Care International, leading technical programmes for WHO, PAHO, UNHCR, GIZ and the EU. Mamsallah founded Pada from a conviction that a structured, well-supported diaspora return is the most powerful untapped resource for transforming Nigerian primary care.
A compassionate and mission-driven General Practitioner with over three decades of clinical and global health experience. A Fellow of the Royal College of General Practitioners and holder of an MSc in Public Health from LSHTM, she combines frontline clinical expertise with strategic public health leadership across the NHS in general practice, occupational health and sexual and reproductive health. As a volunteer with the UK Emergency Medical Team she deployed to war-affected Ukrainian villages, and as Co-Founder of the Be a Sister Foundation she has delivered health education to over 5,000 young people across East and West Africa. Ikunna brings to Pada a lifetime of showing up — for patients, for communities across Africa, and for the world's most vulnerable.