Chikwe Ihekweazu
Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), Nigeria
Dr. Chikwe Ihekweazu is the Director General of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) and was, until January 2018, the Acting Director of the West Africa Regional Centre for Disease Control. Dr. Ihekweazu trained as an infectious disease epidemiologist and 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). Dr. Ihekweazu has led several short-term engagements for WHO, mainly in response to major infectious disease outbreaks around the world. Dr. Ihekweazu is a graduate of the College of Medicine, University of Nigeria, and has a master’s in public health degree (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-reviewed journals.