Dr. Mrs. Abigail Agartha Kyei

Dr. Mrs. Abigail Agartha Kyei has over 30 years’ experience managing large-scale health programmes for DANIDA, Jhpiego, and the Ghanaian and Malawian Ministries of Health (MOH). Her rich and extensive experience in health programme development and implementation, spans from pre-service through human capacity development over her several years of work in public health management. She started her career as a facility-centered nurse and midwife in 1987, and has worked as a researcher, a programme officer in an advisory capacity, a team leader, a manager, an administrator, and a seasoned educator.

Dr. Kyei is a Ghanaian by birth. Her first degree is in Nursing, from the University of Ghana; and for her second degree, she earned her Master’s in public health (Maternal & Child Health Concentration) from the San Diego State University, California, in the United States of America (USA). She later pursued and earned her doctoral degree from the University of Phoenix, in Arizona, USA. Despite her extensive travels for further studies and work outside her country in more developed countries, Dr. Kyei is committed to rendering her services to the cause of women and children in developing countries, more especially in Africa including her home country of Ghana.

Dr. Kyei was the pioneer Jhpiego/Ghana Country Director who set up the Ghana office in 2000 and, in that position, she provided strategic leadership for programmes in Midwifery education and training, maternal, new-born and child health, Community-based Health Planning and Services (CHPS), voluntary counselling and testing in HIV, and cervical cancer prevention. While still at the Ghana position, she completed temporary duty in Afghanistan, as an interim programme manager in April 2005, helping to set up a new country office for Jhpiego/ACCESS there. In October 2005, Dr. Kyei was employed by the Johns Hopkins University (JHU) as an Associate Director in Jhpiego and took up an international position to be the Jhpiego/Malawi Country Director.

Dr. Kyei was later given additional responsibility as Chief of Party for Jhpiego/ACCESS from 2007 to 2008. From 2008 to 2013, under the International Confederation of Midwives (ICM), as the International Midwife Advisor (IMA), Dr. Kyei worked on a joint UNFPA/ICM programme that invested in midwives and others with midwifery skills to improve maternal and child health to address the fourth and fifth Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) of reducing child mortality and improving maternal health respectively. In this capacity, Dr. Kyei was the team leader overseeing the programme in several other countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean.

In 2014, Dr. Kyei joined the faculty of the Department of Nursing at the then Pentecost University College (a faith-based university in Ghana), as a lecturer. She has since been promoted to the level of Senior Lecturer and is currently the Head of Department for Nursing and Midwifery in the same institution which is now a fully-fledged university with a presidential charter. Dr. Kyei is also a member of the Pentecost University Council. Dr. Kyei enjoys reading widely and possesses good editing skills. She has over 12 peer reviewed publications to her credit spanning over 1992 to date. She is the Editor-in-Chief for the Numid Horizon, the official journal of the Nursing and Midwifery Council of Ghana. After being elected and inducted into office in November 2018, Dr. Kyei is currently the President of the Ghana College of Nurses and Midwives. In private life, Dr. Mrs. Kyei is married with five children and is also a grandmother of two grandsons and three granddaughters.