The Cobar Primary Health Care Centre has recently welcomed another new perma-nent doctor to the centre with overseas trained, Dr Abiola Adesina, joining the staff.
Nigerian-born, Dr Adesina became a family physician 15 years ago after completing his post graduate training at Stellenbosch University in South Africa.
He has worked as a doctor in Nigeria, Namibia and Botswana and, in the past 10 years, he has worked in the public health system as a chief medical officer.
He recently decided to make the move to Australia with his wife and three children.
“I came to Australia based on my post graduate qualification. I came here as a specialist through a specialist pathway,” Dr Adesina said.
He then had to fulfil a number of conditions set down by the AHPR (Australian Health Profession Regulation) authority before he was able to start practicing in Australia.
Dr Adesina said he chose Australia and Co-bar as there was “an avalanche of opportunity” here for him to further develop his skills.
“And Australia has a reputation for welcoming expatriates,” he said.
His areas of particular interest include women’s health and sexual reproduction, emergency medicine, mental health and children’s health.
The move to Cobar has come as a bit of a surprise to the whole family as Dr Adesina said all they knew about Cobar was what they had read on the internet, which was very limited.
“I wasn’t sure exactly where I was going to!”
While he hasn’t previously worked in such a remote location, he said “medicine is the same everywhere”.
“The only difference is culture, and their approach to diseases,” he said.
So far Dr Adesina and his family have found Cobar to be a nice place with friendly people.
“It’s small enough to know the people you are dealing with and big enough to get your basic needs met,” he said.
The family was also pleased to find a lot of activities that the children can be involved in while Dr Adesina’s wife is continues her stud-ies as an Oral Pathologist.
