CITATION

PROFESSOR ADENIKE GRANGE MB, CHB (ST. ANDREWS) DCH (LONDON) FMCPAED (NIG), FWACP, FAAP

Professor Adenike Grange attended the Methodist Girls High School in and subsequently completed her secondary education at St. Francis College, Letchworth in the United Kingdom. In 1958 she was admitted to the famous University of St Andrews in Scotland where she read Medicine graduating in 1964. She did her house jobs at the Dudley Road Hospital in Birmingham before returning home in 1965.

On her return she worked in various hospitals such as the Maternity, the Creek hospital and the Massey Street Children’s Hospital. She had always wanted to be Paediatrician and so in 1967 she returned to the UK where she was a senior house officer (paediatrics) at the St Mary’s Hospital for children and briefly at King’s College Hospital in London obtaining a Diploma in Child Health (DCH) in 1969.

In 1971 she joined the residency training programme at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital. She joined the College of Medicine, as a lecturer in 1978 and was appointed a consultant to the Lagos University Teaching Hospital. She was promoted Senior Lecturer in 1981 and appointed Professor in 1995. She is the first female Professor of Paediatrics at the College of Medicine, University of Lagos.

Professor Grange has served her institution creditably in various capacities including Headship of the Department of Paediatrics, Director, Institute of Child Health and lastly Dean of the School of Clinical Sciences, She has also served her country meritoriously as a consultant to the Federal Ministry of Health, WHO, UNICEF, UNFPA and USAID. In these various capacities she was instrumental in formulating and implementing several guidelines for training and practice, especially diarrhea management guidelines, breastfeeding guidelines, immunization monitoring guidelines and most recently strengthening adolescent health programmes in Nigeria. She is an author of over fifty scientific papers mainly on diarrhoeal and nutritional conditions in children. She is on the board of many national and international expert committees such as the Global Alliance for Vaccine and Immunization (GAVI).

She is currently the President of the International Paediatric Association (the second from sub-Saharan Africa and the first woman from Africa). In this capacity she has proven to be an international stateswoman, a resolute and committed advocate of the children and an unshaken defender of their rights.

On the 25th of July 2007, she was appointed the Minister of Health of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, the first female Minister of Health.

Professor ADENIKE Grange MBCHB (ST.Andrews), DCH (LONDON), FMCPAED (NIG.), FWACP, FAAP