Nigeria’s President, Muhammadu Buhari has appointed a new Director-General for the Centre for Disease Control, after current chief, Dr. Chikwe Ihekweazu was appointed into a new role at the World Health Organisation.
Buhari appointed Dr. Ifedayo Morayo Adetifa as the new DG of the NCDC and was announced in a statement by the Presidential Spokesperson, Garba Shehu.
Adetifa will take over from Ihekweazu, a very experienced Public Health practitioner, who became the first DG of the NCDC in 2016 and performed superlatively in his position, earning plaudits from near and far. Ihekweazu was instrumental in Nigeria’s battle against Ebola Virus Disease in 2014 and was one of those who developed the framework for the current NCDC.
The former DG was appointed in 2016 and the NCDC Act was passed and signed into law by the Nigerian President afterwards. Ihekweazu was last week appointed as the Deputy Director General in charge of Health Emergency Intelligence at the WHO. He will resume his new role on the 1st of November.
The new man at the NCDC, Ifedayo Adetifa is an Associate Professor at the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands and doubles as a Clinical Epidemiologist at KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Programme,Kilifi, Kenya. He has also worked at the the Medical Research Council Unit, The Gambia at the LSHTM.
Adetifa has worked in various vaccine policy advisory roles and is a member of the Kenyan National Immunisation Coordination Committee, the WHO AFRO Regional Immunisation Technical Advisory Group (RITAG), the Advisory Group of the WHO Malaria Vaccine Implementation Programme, and the WHO Technical Advisory Group on RSV vaccines.
He is also an expert on infectious diseases epidemiology.