Professor Folasade Ogunsola has been appointed first female Vice Chancellor of University of Lagos (UNILAG), Nigeria. Ogunsola emerged the best among the seven candidates penned for the top job.
Others who made the shortlist include Ayo Olowe of the Department of Finance, Faculty of Management Sciences; Abayomi Akinyeye of the Department of History, Faculty of Arts; Folasade Ogunsola of the College of Medicine; Mathew Ilori and Adeyinka Adekunle both of the Department of Microbiology and Botany, Faculty of Sciences; Imran Smith, Faculty of Law; and Timothy Nubi, Department of Estate Management at the Faculty of Environmental Science.
Ogunsola, 64 is a professor of Medical Microbiology and a consultant clinical microbiologist and infection control at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital.
Ogunsola was provost of College of Medicine and specialises in disease control, particularly HIV/AIDS. She was also the Deputy Vice Chancellor (Development Services) of the institution between 2017 and 2021.
She was elected as the acting vice chancellor of University of Lagos on August 24, 2020, by the university’s senate.
Ogunsola identified poor hygiene and overuse of antibiotics as practices that foster antimicrobial-drug resistance. Providing a solution, she maintained that “sustained Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) infrastructure and programs should be built around a set of core components which includes guidelines, training, surveillance, multimodal strategies for implementing IPC, monitoring and evaluation among others”.
She was a founding member of the Nigerian Society for Infection control in 1998 and is also a member of the Global Infection Prevention and control Network.