NHEA to Honour Akinkugbe, Lambo, Okoli with Lifetime Achievement Awards

Martins Ifijeh

Three distinguished and accomplished icons in the Nigeria healthcare sector will be honoured with Life Time Achievements Award by the Nigerian Healthcare Excellence Award (NHEA) in Lagos on June 21, 2019.

The awardees are Emeritus Professor Oladapo Olujimi Akinkugbe; former Minister of Health, Professor Eyitayo Lambo and Founder / Group Managing Director of Emzor Pharmaceutical, Dr. Stella Chinyelu Okoli.

This ceremony, which is part of a bigger awards night that will honour over 35 individuals and organisations that have made tremendous impacts in the Nigeria healthcare sector in 2018, is an annual award presentation dubbed Nigeria’s healthcare Oscars.

According to NHEA Project Director, Dr. Wale Alabi, “We feel honoured and excited by these personalities and their immense contributions in the development of healthcare both locally and internationally. They have exhibited excellence and distinguished themselves. We are proud of them.”

Akinkugbe, an Emeritus Professor of Medicine, University of Ibadan received his medical degree from London University in 1958. After residency at The London and King’s College Hospitals, went up to Balliol College in Oxford University in 1962 for the D.Phil, working under Sir George Pickering FRS, Regius Professor of Medicine.
He proceeded to his MD (London) and Fellowship of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh and later to the Chair of Medicine in 1968.

He was subsequently Dean of Medicine at Ibadan, Foundation Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ilorin, Vice-Chancellor, Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria, and in the 1980s Pro-Chancellor and Chair of Council of the University of Port Harcourt.
He was the foundation Chair of JAMB and Chair of the Management Board, University College Hospital (UCH), Ibadan.

He has served on many World Health Organisation Expert Committees on Cardiovascular Diseases and Health Manpower Development and on the prestigious WHO Global Advisory Committee on Health Research. He was also on the Scientific Advisory Panel of the Ciba Foundation in London for many years.

Lambo holds both B.Sc., M.A. degrees in Economics and a Ph.D. degree in Operational Research applied to health systems. He is an awardee of the Fellowship of Operational Research (England), the Fellowship of the Nigerian Economic Society, and a Degree of Doctor of Science (D.Sc., Honoris Causa) by Bingham University.

Leaving the university as a professor, he joined the WHO where he worked for 10 years before taking yet another early and voluntary retirement. He served as Nigeria’s Minister of Health from 2003 to 2007.

Okoli obtained her B.Pharm (Hons) and an MSc in Bio-Pharmaceutics from University of London, Chelsea College in 1971. She has attended The Harvard Business School Owner Manager Program; the Chief Executive Programme of Lagos Business School and I.E.S.E, Business School, Barcelona, Spain.

She founded Chike Okoli Foundation in 2006 in memory of her beloved son Chike.
In 2018, the NHEA Lifetime Achievement Awardee was Prof. Fola Tayo, a pharmacist and pharmacologist.

NHEA 2019 is supported by PharmAccess Foundation and is organised by Global Health Project and Resources (GHPR) in collaboration with Anadach Group, USA.