| Intro | Nigerian epidemiologist |
| Is |
Businessperson Business executive |
| From | Nigeria |
| Type | Business |
| Gender | male |
Chikwe Ihekweazu is a Nigerian 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.
Personal life
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.
Chikwe married his wife Vivianne Ihekweazu in 2003 and they have two children.
Career
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.
Health Advocacy
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”.