Dr Chikwe Ihekweazu: Age, Birth, Parents, state of origin, Education, Qualifications, Positions Held, Appointment , Career, Personal Life, Wife and Family.
Apart from being very popular in the medical circles and community, very few Nigerians are aware of the enormous credentials of the present NCDC boss, Dr Chikwe Ihekweazu, who has become one of the most googled personality in Nigeria right now. He is the helmsman of the Nigerian Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), a constitutionally authorized body in Nigeria saddled with the responsibility of fighting contagious epidemics especially the deadly coronavirus pandemic that is currently wreaking havoc on the world and humanity with over 2 million people infected and nearly 150,000 dead.
The NIGERIAN HEALTH BLOG has decided to look into the enviable profile of this gentleman and here is what we got about Dr Chikwe Ihekweazu.
Age/how old is chikwe ihekweazu
Ihekweazu was born in Igboland in southeastern Nigeria in 1971, he is 49 years old.
Parents
Chikwe was born to a Nigerian-German parents. His father is a Nigerian doctor and the mother, a German professor.
Education/Qualification
He backed his MBBS from the University of Nigeria Nsukka in 1996 and a Masters in Public Health from Heinrich-Heine University, Germany in 2001.
In 2007, he was certified an Infectious Diseases Epidemiologist and a Consultant in Public Health Medicine at United Kingdom’s Faculty of Public Health.
Here is a timeline of Dr Chikwe Ihekweazu educational background and qualifications.
Appointment
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.
He was appointed the Chief Executive Officer of Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) on 15 August 2016 by PresidentMuhammadu Buhari.
Before the president appointed him, he was the acting director of the West Africa Centre for Disease Control and several positions in South Africa notable among which is the capacity of the Co-Director of Centre for Tuberculosis at the South Africa National Institute for Communicable Diseases.
Prior to this, he was a Consultant Medical Epidemiologist, working for the UK’s Health Protection Agency, covering the South East region of England and at Germany’s Robert Koch working as a Public Health Analyst.
Ihekweazu has held several consultancy roles with the World Health Organisation, in response to major outbreaks and supporting the design of surveillance systems in Geneva, Sudan, Liberia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Swaziland, Turkey and Nigeria.
In 2013, he was appointed as the Honorary Senior Lecturer on Infectious Diseases, , University College London.
Chikwe Ihekweazu is the Managing Partner of EpiAfric.
Chikwe Ihekweazu is from which state? (state of origin)
He is from Enugu, South-eastern Nigeria, Nsukka to be precise.
Chikwe Ihekweazu wife, Vivianne Ihekweazu
Chikwe married his wife Vivianne Ihekweazu in 2003 and they have two children. Vivianne Ihekweazu is the managing director of Nigeria Health Watch, a health communication and advocacy organization based in Nigeria.
How Dr Chikwe Ihekweazu Got the NCDC Top Job
One July evening in 2016, Ihekweazu got a call from an official in Nigeria, telling him that in the morning, Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari would appoint him head of the fledgling NCDC. He hadn’t applied for the job, nor did he particularly want it.
By the next day, his inbox was overflowing with congratulatory messages.
He switched off his phone and walked through the cool, damp streets of Durban, South Africa, pondering the long list of problems troubling Nigeria: poverty, conflict, corruption, dirty water, population growth.
He realized that it would be hypocritical to have complained about the government’s approach and then reject an opportunity to fix it. He was going home.
READ ALSO: Profile of Prof Akin Abayomi , Lagos State Commissioner for Health
Sources
Wikipedia
ONE
theconversation
Nature
