The Director-General of the West African Health Organization (WAHO), Prof Stanley Okolo is making Nigeria and indeed West Africa proud with his numerous innovations in the area of health improvement, particularly his effort toward ending COVID-19 and other diseases in the region.
Okolo who has been championing the effort toward ending numerous health challenges across West Africa, will be speaking at the ECOWAS Assembly of Health Ministers (AHM) scheduled to hold at the Movenpick Hotel Accra, Ghana on 13 May 2022.
Following his vision for the West Africa and perhaps African healthcare system, Okolo in an opening remark at the technical meetings will again emphasize the challenges to the health systems infrastructure in the sub-region that presents the need for special meetings, focusing on health research, malaria elimination, and local production of vaccines and medicines.
He will also acknowledge the effort of the Ghana government for its generosity and hospitality.
During the event, a high-level meeting of potential vaccine manufacturers in the ECOWAS region would be discussed, even as the DG plans to work with other stakeholders towards tackling the scourge of malaria in the sub-region.
The Director-General and his team will also be having an annual meeting with all partners and stakeholders. They will engage all financial and technical partners who are about 15 including the World Health Organization, WHO, the WorldBank, USAID, GOZ, and others.
They will also be part of the Sahel Malaria Elimination (SaME) Initiative meeting. Health Ministers and experts from 8 Sahel countries including Mauritania and Chad will also take part in the very important meeting.
Professor Okolo as a key speaker will center his discussion on the creation of a framework for collaboration, information exchange, and how to develop a framework for vaccine producers in West Africa. There shall be a strategic discussion on how to support each order in order to build the most desired regional hub for vaccine production in Africa.
Professor Okolo is an obstetrician and gynecologist, who believes that to improve population health, intervention programs in developing countries should address the wider issues of health and well-being as well as illness and disease. He is a strong advocate of using constructive disruption to achieve accelerated health improvement.
Okolo was nominated in March 2018 to head WAHO as one of Nigeria’s Statutory Appointees to the Economic Community of West Africa (ECOWAS). An award-winning leader, clinical academic, and executive coach, Professor Okolo has had key regional and international leadership roles in healthcare, academic partnerships, and professional organizations. His focus at the moment is the total eradication of dangerous diseases from the region through the production of vaccines and their effective distribution in order to attain a healthy West African region.
