The American Medical Association has honoured Nigerian doctor Bennet Omalu with its Distinguished Service Award. The forensic neuropathologist was given the award for his discovery of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a degenerative brain disease which mostly affects athletes engaged in contact sports.
Dr. Omalu made the discovery in 2002, while conducting postmortem examinations on the brain of a US football player. The athlete, Mike Webster, had died after behaving abnormally. Dr. Omalu’s findings, which he went on to publish, were not well received by America’s National Football League (NFL), and the body embarked on a campaign to discredit his work. He however stood his ground, and in 2009, the NFL openly acknowledged that CTE was linked to concussions sustained by football players.
The AMA President, Andrew Gurman, said at the opening session of the AMA’s Interim Meeting, that the association was presenting Dr. Omalu with the award “because of the service Dr. Omalu has rendered to every player and every family in the football and other sporting communities”.
Bennet Omalu, who became an American citizen in 2015, is an alumnus of the University of Nigeria, and is currently clinical associate professor in the University of California. His contribution to neuropathology has been widely celebrated; many regard him as one of the greatest scientific minds to have emerged from Nigeria in recent times.
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