Prof Uche Amazigo is a public health expert, a medical parasitologist and a social inclusion and development professional, with a bias in the Control of Tropical Infectious Diseases, Community-Directed Interventions (CDI) for the control and elimination of Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTD).
Amazigo has devoted most of her academic, public and international career to community participation and contribution to governance, improving and strengthening health systems and in promoting the control and elimination of neglected tropical diseases. Her preferred strategy and approach foster an environment of trust and effective multi-sectoral partnership with direct positive impact on good governance and sustainable development. It is a rights-based strategy that centres on investment and development in humans, in particular, the dignity of communities to contribute to issues that affect them. It is an approach that promotes social inclusion.
While teaching at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, her pioneering discovery of the disability and social isolation of adolescent girls caused by river blindness skin disease, shed greater light on the causes and effects of the disease. This ground-breaking research contributed significantly to the creation of the World Health Organization African Programme for Onchocerciasis Control (WHO/APOC) in 1995 – a programme she directed for six years.
Her contributions and role in the development of APOC’s community medicine distribution concept paved the way for Community-Directed Treatment with Ivermectin (CDTI), heralding one of the most effective strategies of community participation and good governance in public health. She was very instrumental in moving the APOC from control to an elimination programme in 2009.
Amazigo’s leadership and oversight of interventions in over 146,000 communities, a partnership with 30 governments and 16 NGOs, expanded community participation in governance, albeit, from a health delivery perspective until her retirement from the World Health Organization in 2011.
Prof Amazigo has won numerous awards over her career and advised several agencies.