Dr Chikwe Andreas IHEKWEAZU, MBBS, DCH&TM, MPH, EPIET, FFPH
Dr Chikwe Ihekweazu is Assistant Director-General at the Health Emergencies Programme of the World Health Organization.
Prior to this, Dr Ihekweazu was the first Director General of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) and led the agency between July 2016 and October 2021, where he built up this national public health agency from a small unit to a leading public health agency in Africa, working closely with the Africa Centres for Disease Control. He acted as Interim Director of the West Africa Regional Centre for Surveillance and Disease Control through 2017.
Dr Ihekweazu trained as an infectious disease epidemiologist and has worked in leadership positions in several national public health agencies, including NCDC, the South African National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD), the UK's Health Protection Agency (HPA), and Germany’s Robert Koch Institute (RKI). Dr Ihekweazu led several short-term engagements for WHO, mainly to build surveillance systems and in response to major infectious disease outbreaks around the world. He was part of the first WHO COVID-19 international mission to China, in February 2020.
Dr Ihekweazu is a graduate of the College of Medicine, University of Nigeria and has a Master in Public Health (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 (FFPH). He has over 150 publications in medical peer review journals mostly focused on the epidemiology of infectious diseases.
He is the recipient of an Honorary Doctor of Science (DSc) awarded by the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, UK, the National Productivity Order of Merit (NPOM) of the Order of the Niger (OON) awarded by the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, for his service to Nigeria.
