By Desmond Ekwueme
Dr. Chikwe Ihekweazu is a 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.
Chikwe 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.
His mother was Professor Edith Ihekweazu, a German. She was a professor of linguistics and first female HOD, Foreign Languages at UNN but died at a young age of 50 in 1991 in a motor accident. She was also the first female dean, Faculty of Arts of the university. Whe she died her children including Chikwe were still very young. In 2018 UNN began a process of immortalising her for the pioneering work she did in the university when the Department of Foreign Languages instituted the Edith Ihekweazu Memorial Lecture.
Chikwe married his wife Vivianne Ihekweazu in 2003 and they have two children.
He 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.
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. 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”.
Ihekweazu has been in the frontline of the battle with Covid-19. He has been attending to scores of cases day and night…and coming very close to the pandemic….eyeball to eyeball. He takes all the risks and faces all the horrifying and terrifying challenges. He has been taking records and history of patients and linking with his colleagues at the WHO seeking more precautionary solutions and measures just as vaccines are expected for cure of the pandemic.
What can we wish, demand or request other than for God to keep protecting Ihekweazu and his family! In the Lord’s hands we commit Ihekweazu and his career!
