Personality Of The Month: CHIKWE IHEKWEAZU

With the vision to build the confidence of Nigerians in the fight against infectious diseases through the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), Dr. Chikwe Ihekweazu is living his dream in the Agency as the Director General. Ihekweazu, a trained epidemiologist and public health physician was appointed the pioneer Director General and Chief Executive Officer of NCDC, an Agency established in response to the challenges of public health emergencies and to enhance Nigeria’s preparedness and response to epidemics through prevention, detection and control of communicable and non-communicable diseases. He 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). Ihekweazu has led several short-term engagements for WHO, mainly in response to major infectious disease outbreaks around the world.

Prior to his appointment as the DG of NCDC, he was the Acting Director of the Regional Centre for Disease Control for West Africa. Dr. Ihekweazu is a graduate of the College of Medicine, University of Nigeria and has a Master’s Degree 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.

He is the co-founder, Epi-AFRIC and Nigeria Health Watch where he held the position of managing partner and editor respectively. In 2011, he moved to South Africa as the co-director of the Centre for Tuberculosis at the South Africa National Institute for Communicable Diseases, Johannesburg and later as a medical epidemiologist consultant at United Kingdom’s Health Protection Agency. During the early stage of the COVID-19 pandemic, he was part of a team of experts of the World Health Organisation that travelled to China on a joint mission to study the epidemic in China.

He was once quoted in one of the event he attended before his appointment as the DG of NCDC that the country is unprepared for epidemic. According to the report, he stated that “Nigeria needs a central, well-resourced centre for infectious disease prevention and control, or one day we will pay the price the hard way”. Now that he is in the saddle of such Agency, all eyes are on him to prove his mettle which he is living up to the expectation of Nigerians through the handling of COVID-19 by the NCDC.

Chikwe was born to a Nigerian-German parents. His father is a Nigerian doctor and the mother, a German professor. He is happily married and the marriage is blessed with children. For his proactive, dedicated and committed role in the discharge of his duties as the Director General of NCDC in the fight against COVID-19 in Nigeria, Dr. Chikwe Ihekweazu is THE SUPREMACY Magazine Paragon and Personality of the Month.