We are living in an Age of Interdependence, wholeness, ones, unity in diversity, rights and responsibilities, empowerment and participation. As young nurses, keep in mind that the world is neither linear nor rectangular. It is round.

Therefore, as you treat the patients whom you will have the privilege and the duty to attend to, do so with indelible compassion, inspiring trust, reassuring sympathy and endemic love. Because you do not know when you will be repaid in your own coins.

In a world that is at once full of opportunity and uncertainty, young men, women, parents and employers often find themselves running on a collision course as a result of limited resources, unfulfilled expectations and the difficulties of the times.

In our society, unemployment, poverty, bribery, corruption, injustice and abuses of freedom tend to dilute the virtues of the God-given beauty, bounty and blessings of our society.

Faced by such cognitive dissonance, many of you will quickly be tempted to give up; pushing the nightingale apocalyptic oath under the carpet. People without a vision, driven by personal satisfactions of here and now would yield to such mundane temptations. But people with a thrust unto the future would insist to see no evil, do no evil, speak no evil and entrust their unknown future into the hands of a known God.

Good nursing practice requires that nurse treat their patients will; providing polite and respectful health care and creating a feeling of warmth, confidence and trust.

Most of the healing process is psychological. Unfortunately, not enough attention seems to be paid to psychological factors in our healthcare system. Therefore, I entreat our young graduating medics to interact more with the patients, allowing them to ask questions about their illnesses. Let them tell you how they feel about the way you treat them. As health caregivers, you have to do more listening, more learning, and more efforts to understand and provide information to patients, their guardians, families and friends. Why? Because family and friends are the social cushion on which we all lean in times of trouble, fear and uncertainty.

In other words:
1. If your patient has problems, seek ways and means to resolve them. Never wait for the ideal circumstances, nor the best opportunities; they will never come.

In a study I did for the World Bank in 1994 part of which I published in my book "why poor people remain poor", a medical doctor operated a patient in Akwaya with a razor blade. And there was good news: the patient survived. If he had to wait for the ideal circumstances and the appropriate surgical instruments, we would have lost the patient.

2. If they have questions, try to answer them to the fullest of your ability ,and son not be afraid to seek for help to help your patients. For, as Zig Ziglar once said "you can have everything in life you want if you'll just help enough other people to get what they want".

3. If your patients are afraid, comfort and reassure them, inspiring trust and self confidence in them. As Marcus Aurelius said "accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together, but do so with all your heart"

4. In times of difficulty and uncertainty, pray and ask God to take control of your thoughts and actions. Because if God took you to it, he will take you through it.

I recognize that it is difficult and tough in today's society to keep the high moral values which we acquire in the primary group of the family and are taught in the secondary group of the school and church.

But you never fail until you stop trying or as booker T. Washington once said, "success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life, as by the obstacles with one has overcome while trying to succeed."

With farewell to full employment, and the social contract under stress in our society, the time is very fertile for financial, economic, social and political indiscipline, particularly at the individual, family and community levels. While some people want it all for themselves, others would like to se the care shared with distributive justice. Try to find a place in the later group in which there is more room, a common sense of belonging and shared hope in our common future.

Health is wealth. And the wealth of a nation is its people. Therefore, while individuals like these young people strive to acquire the education and training they need to contribute positively to a good healthcare system, institutions and governments have the obligations to improve system governance and the responsibility to achieve greater efficiency and effectiveness as well as improve job satisfaction.

Poor people, children the elderly ad rural residents are generally the most vulnerable to poor health services; and this tends to keep them in the vicious trap of poverty characterized by malnutrition, high mortality rates, low productivity and insecurity. The implication of this is that training institutions and policy makers should ensure that the training curricula in nursing and medical schools address the needs to the whole person, taking into consideration the interdependence of the various parts of the community.

Three of the eight millennium development goals have to do with health: reducing child mortality, improving maternal health and combating HIV/AIDS, rolling back malaria and reducing the impact and incident of other diseases to lower levels by the year 20015.

I cannot end this word of advice, if it is a word, without saying something about this wild animal that is giving all of our families sleepless nights: HIV/AIDS. There is no single family in this hall that has not been visited by this devil. And research is showing increasingly that HIV/AIDS has a woman's face. And that face is embarrassingly young.

Our task, the "task of today" borrowing from professor Bernard Fonlon, is for all of us sitting in this hall to chase this wild animal out of our back yards into the woods from where it came. We ask the sugar daddies to lead us in this chase.

A good speaker once said, when you speak, have respect for those who listen. So I must draw my word of advice to a close.

It is my fervent hope and desire that eh foundation for high quality and relevant nursing training and education that is being laid here at St. Louis Higher Institute of Health, will enhance Cameroon's capacity to meet the performance targets of the MDGs. And make of Cameroon a better place to be born, to live, to work, to retire and to die. May all the graduating nurses find the world of work a place of joy and peace, and happiness as they strive to serve humanity.

Thank you for listening.
May God bless us all on our individual and collective journeys.