Professor Wellington Oyibo

Wellington Oyibo (Tropical Disease Specialist) is a Professor and Consultant Medical Parasitologist at the College of Medicine of the University of Lagos, Lagos, Nigeria. He was also a member of faculty of the Faculty of Medicine, Addis Ababa University, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. His graduate studies at the Master’s and doctoral level was at the College of Medicine, University of Lagos, Lagos, with intercalated doctoral studies as a Research Scholar at the Division of Geographic Medicine, University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) Alabama, USA. At UAB, he worked on river blindness (onchocerciasis) – a neglected tropical disease. In this initial area of research interest, he contributed to the molecular characterization of the blinding and non-blinding forms of the disease and elucidated the dynamics in the control of the disease with ivermectin in endemic communities of Nigeria among other research outcomes. His trajectory on onchocerciasis earned him a temporary Technical Advisor position to the WHO/APOC programme on onchocerciaisis control. He also received a Fellowship, supported by the National Institute of Health, USA, to undertake a Postgraduate Certificate programme in Health Research Ethics through the South African Research Ethics Initiative at the University of Pretoria, South Africa in 2004.

Wellington’s research in the last fifteen years has been on malaria case management, fever biomarker assessment and other neglected tropical parasitic diseases. He served in the Global Malaria Diagnostic Evaluation Steering Committee of the World Health Organization; consultant to and collaborates with the Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics (FIND), Geneva, Switzerland; Federal Ministry of Health’s National Malaria Elimination Programme (NMEP), several Malaria Implementing Partners, State and Local Governments in building capacity for health workers, quality assurance on parasite-based diagnosis and other areas of diagnostic implementation. He was also recently appointed as a member, Technical Working Group for Schistosomiasis and Steering Committee for Neglected Tropical Diseases, Federal Ministry of Health.

Wellington coordinates the International Malaria Microscopy and RDT Quality assurance Center, as well as the in-country’s WHO/FIND Malaria Specimen Collection Site in the College of Medicine, University of Lagos, Nigeria. This Centre was designated the ANDI Centre of Excellence for Malaria Diagnosis in 2011 after a competitive selection process. Prof. Oyibo serves as Key Opinion Leader and Key Expert Leader to several organizations, including Novartis Pharma. He is Principal Investigator in a number of funded basic and implementation research and he is currently involved in a consortium of institutions in the development of a point-of-care test for malaria and schistosomiasis in a-Netherland NWO’s One million euros funded project. With over eighty published articles in peer-reviewed journals, he is a Fellow of the Institute of Biomedical Science, UK; African Science Fellow, NIH/Fogarty Bioethics Fellow among others and a recipient of a number of grants, fellowships and awards. Wellington has mentored several doctoral candidates and supported capacity building activities within and outside Nigeria. He recently completed his tenure as Director Research and Innovation of the University of Lagos, where he coordinated funded research, including capacity building for Next Generation Research Leaders and galvanized the nexus between the academia and the industry using innovative approaches.