Board

Professor Olumide Ogundahunsi

Chairman

Dr Olumide AT Ogundahunsi was born in Lagos and educated at Igbobi College, Lagos; University of Ibadan, Ibadan; Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria and the Oregon Health Sciences University, Portland, Oregon, USA.

His professional career spans a period of almost four decades in teaching, international scientific research (delivery, administration, and management). From a background of chemical and biological sciences, he obtained a doctorate degree from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria and was an academic, researcher and administrator at different times from 1985 in three Nigerian Universities (Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile Ife, Olabisi Onabanjo University, Ago Iwoye and the University of Ibadan) and the World Health Organization.

At the WHO from 2000 to 2020, he led several programmes and initiatives to strengthen research capacity in low- and middle-income countries at the institutional and individual levels including setting up postgraduate and post-doctoral training programmes with 7 selected universities in Africa, Asia, Middle East and South America, strengthening laboratory and health systems capacity for optimum delivery of health technologies and interventions by national institutions; building health system capacity to address barriers impeding equitable access to and delivery of quality health services; optimizing supply chains, pharmacovigilance and safety monitoring systems, programme implementation and service delivery.

He led partnerships between the WHO Special Programme for Research and Training (TDR) with multilateral agencies initiatives such as the access and delivery partnership (ADP) (www.adphealth.org) to strengthen the policies, human capacities, systems and regulations needed to ensure that medicines, vaccines and diagnostics ultimately reach the people who need them. In this role, he engaged a wide range of stakeholders in the health sector such as the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), PATH, The German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), The United States Agency for International Development (USAID), The Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA), the European and Developing Country Clinical Trials Partnership (EDCTP) and national governments across Africa and Southeast Asia.

He retired from the World Health Organization in 2020 and has since August 2020 been Director, Central Office for Research and Development, and Professor of Pharmacology at the University of Medical Sciences, Ondo. With his strong conviction that health, development and prosperity are intricately linked, he has continued to pursue his interest in strengthening capacity for research and its application for development and prosperity in his current role at the University of Medical Sciences.