Cecilia Oduro is the Founder and Executive Director of Life Relief Foundation NGO based in the Western region. She is a nurse midwife by profession and holds a certificate in Nursing and Midwifery (1972, 1980-1981) from the Midwifery Training School and Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital in Ghana. She was accepted as a member of the Ghana Nurses and Midwife Council in 1980 and a member of Sigma Theta Tau International Honor Society of Nursing (USA) and the Association of Nurses in AIDS Care (USA) in 2000.

Cecilia served in various capacities as a nurse midwife at KORLE–BU teaching hospital, Enchi Hospital and Effia-Nkwanta Hospital. Later in 1985, she transferred to the Planned Parenthood Association of Ghana as a Family Planning Nursing Officer, where she worked for 18 years as a master trainer in Clinical Family Planning and Sexual and Reproductive Health.

Despite her love for bedside nursing, Cecilia entered the HIV/AIDS profession in 1996, after witnessing the devastation AIDS was wreaking on societies and families as a whole. She resigned from PPAG to sound a warning

to the populace weekly via Takoradi’s local SKYY FM station and community BCC activities. Through these sensitization and awareness creation activities, she realized that much needed to be done in terms of caring for the already infected and affected people.

In 2003, Cecilia began to offer home-based nursing care and psychosocial counselling to both infected and affected persons in the comfort of their homes. Cecilia established Life Relief Foundation (LRF) NGO, with her severance award to offer community home-based care in the comfort of patients’ homes, as most hospitals would not admit AIDS patients. In 2003, Cecilia applied for a scholarship to the Regional AIDS Training Network in Kenya and was trained by Family AIDS Caring Trust in Zimbabwe on home-based care and support services for PLHIV. From 2003 to date, Cecilia has been working with PLHIV and orphans, the key population, female sex workers and the general population. She is a key implementing partner in HIV/AIDS projects in the Western region of Ghana.

Her partners and donors include Ghana Health Services, Ghana Education Services, Social welfare, CHRAJ, DOVVSU, District Assemblies, Traditional Leaders and PLHIV AED SHARP, USAID FHI360 SHARPER, World Vision International, SCASO project), USAID /JHU Behavior Change and Support project, URC PROMPT GHANA Project, Global fund ALCO, Unicef Child Protection at refugee camps, Save the Children Sweden, and Ghana Aids Commission.

In her role as a leader, Cecilia emerged as one of the leading innovations of Community Care and Support implementers and chief architect of landmark reforms in HIV/AIDS care. She served in various capacities as a Member of the Western Region coordinating council. Member of Regional AIDS Committee, vice national president GHANET, regional president GHANET, District AIDS committee member and a lead NGO for USAID care continuum project.

Cecilia Oduro is widely known for her work as the country’s pacesetter for community preventive health and home-based care and support services for Orphans and PLHIV in the Western region of Ghana. She has worked in that field for close to two decades and gained vast experience. Cecilia is now a social worker and community development specialist who has invested hugely in this work.