Chikwe Ihekweazu is a Nigerian epidemiologist and public health physician. He was appointed the Chief Executive Officer of Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) on 15 August 2016 by President Muhammadu Buhari.
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Background and Career
Dr Ihekweazu was born to a Nigerian-German parents. His father is a Nigerian doctor and the mother, a German professor. Chikwe holds an MBBS from the University of Nigeria and a Masters in Public Health from Heinrich-Heine University, Germany.
Dr Ihekweazu trained as an infectious disease epidemiologist and has over 20 years’ experience working in senior public health and leadership positions in several National Public Health Institutes, including the South African National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD), the UK’s Health Protection Agency, and Germany’s Robert Koch Institute (RKI).
In addition to the above, Dr Ihekweazu co-founded EpiAFRIC and Nigeria Health Watch as managing partner and editor respectively. In 2011, he moved to Johannesburg, South Africa with his family to become the co-director of the Centre for Tuberculosis at the South Africa National Institute for Communicable Diseases, Johannesburg, South Africa and later as a medical epidemiologist consultant at United Kingdom’s Health Protection Agency. He is currently the Chief Executive Officer, Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), He was the acting director of the Regional Centre for Disease Control for West Africa. Following Nigeria’s National Assembly bill and act, Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) became an independent agency on 13 November 2018 and Chikwe emerged the first Director General of the agency.
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Dr Ihekweazu summarises his vision for the National Centre for Disease Control in the following words;
“It is my vision to build the confidence of Nigerians in the NCDC as the body established to protect the health of citizens through information, inclusion and timely response to health concerns.”
Chikwe Ihekweazu: Advocate for a Healthier World
Dr. Chikwe Ihekweazu is the Director General of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) and was until January 2018, the Acting Director of the Regional Centre for Disease Control for West Africa. Dr Ihekweazu has led several short-term engagements for WHO, mainly in response to major infectious disease outbreaks around the world.
In 2007, Chikwe attended his first TED conference in Tanzania. It was reported by Nature that Chikwe criticized Nigeria for being unprepared for epidemics in his blog- 2009–10 H1N1 influenza pandemic,
“Nigeria needs a central, well-resourced centre for infectious disease prevention and control, or one day we will pay the price the hard way”.
Dr Ihekweazu is a graduate of the College of Medicine, University of Nigeria and has a Masters in Public Health (MPH) from the Heinrich-Heine University, Dusseldorf, Germany. In 2003, he was awarded a Fellowship for the European Programme for Intervention Epidemiology Training (EPIET) and subsequently completed his Public Health specialisation in the UK. He is widely published in medical peer review journals.
During the 2019-2020 COVID- 19 Pandemic, he was part of a team of experts of the World Health Organisation on a joint mission to study the epidemic in China.
Chikwe married his wife Vivianne Ihekweazu in 2003 and they have two children.
Sources:
NCDC.Gov NG
Wikipedia
Featured Image Source: Talk Health 9ja
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