Board of Trustees

Dr. Zainab Imam is the Acting Division Chief and Medical Students Clerkship Director for Women’s Mental Health at Sidra Medicine, Qatar. Dr Imam retrained as a Psychiatrist in the UK, obtaining her CCT in General Adult Psychiatry with endorsement in Rehabilitation Psychiatry and Subspecialty interests in Early Intervention in Psychosis and Perinatal Psychiatry. As a Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, she chairs the International Workroom of the Perinatal Faculty. She is a Co-Founder of the Foundation for Refugees Economic Empowerment (FREE), a Trustee of Nigeria IDP Diaspora Support Group and a Faculty of its Lay Trauma Counseling Course.

Dr. Chikwe Ihekweazu is the Assistant Director-General at the World Health Organization (WHO), leading the WHO Hub for Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence. 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. Dr lhekweazu has over 25 years of experience working in senior public health and leadership positions at the South African National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD), the UK’s Health Protection Agency, and Germany’s Robert Koch Institute (RKI). Dr lhekweazu has led several short-term engagements for WHO, mainly in response to major infectious disease outbreaks. He was a co-founder of TEDxEuston.

Dr Ike Anya is a Partner at EpiAFRIC and manages all engagements in Western Europe. He was until recently a Consultant in Public Health Medicine, Deputy Director of Public Health with the UK National Health Service in London, and an honorary lecturer in Public Health at Imperial College. A lead partner for General Medical Council, and a member of the Black & Ethnic Minority Health and Epidemiology & Public Health Section Council at the Royal Society of Medicine and a member of the Advisory Committee for Medecins Du Monde’s Project: London. He is a co-founder of the Abuja Literary Society, the Nigerian Public Health Foundation, and Nigeria Health Watch. He is a TED Global Fellow and cofounder of TEDxEuston.

Dr. Olusola Aruna is the country lead for Public Health England’s (PHE) International Health Regulations (IHR) Strengthening Programme in Nigeria. Dr. Aruna was appointed Consultant in Public Health Medicine in the UK National Health Service (NHS) in 2007. Dr. Aruna supported the design, implementation, and evaluation of surveillance systems in Nigeria as a Senior Technical Advisor on Surveillance to the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control, under the USAID funded MEASURE Evaluation Project. She was appointed Consultant in Public Health Medicine in the UK National Health Service (NHS) in 2007. She is a Fellow of the United Kingdom Faculty of Public Health.