Dr Chinwe Ochu

Dr. Chinwe Lucia Ochu is a medical doctor with MBBS from Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Nigeria and MPH from University of Liverpool, UK. She is a Fellow of the African Institute of Public Health Professionals (FAIPH) and an Associate Professorial Fellow, Center of Excellence in Migration & Global Studies, National Open University, Nigeria.  

She currently works at the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) as the Director Prevention Programmes & Knowledge Management and as the Head of Research. NCDC is Nigeria’s National Public Health Institute with the mandate to protect the health of Nigerians through prevention, early detection and control of infectious diseases of public health importance. She represents NCDC at the National Lassa Fever Research Consortium and at the National Tobacco Control Committee (NATOCC). She is a member of the Body of Experts of Central Bank of Nigeria’s Health Sector Research & Development Intervention Scheme; a member of the College of Experts, DHSC/UKRI Global Effect on COVID-19 (GECO) Health Research; a member of the IANPHI working Group on Public Health and Climate Change; a member of the G7 Signature Initiative on Biosafety and Biosecurity (Working Group 2). She supervises the infection prevention & control (IPC) programme, antimicrobial resistance (AMR) programme, risk communication, and Nigeria Field Epidemiology Training Programme (NFETP). She is leading the development of a National Public Health Workforce Strategy for Nigeria.  She is the convener and National Coordinator of the Nigeria COVID-19 Research Coalition (NCRC), and the Technical Lead of the National Emerging Viral Haemorrhagic Disease (NEVHD) Working Group which is the preparedness and incident management structure for Ebola Virus Disease and other emerging viral heamorrhagic diseases.    

She represents NCDC in the Ebola Steering Committee of the Infectious Disease Data Observatory (IDDO) whose aim is to improve the research capacity of countries affected by Ebola. She has represented Nigeria in international discussions that border on the advancement of accelerator 5 of SDG3 (R&D, Innovation and Access). She has authored several scientific publications and is a collaborator of Global Burden of Disease (GBD) as well as a reviewer for scientific journals and research funders including the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR), UK. She is the Principal Investigator/Project Director of the US CDC-funded ‘Advancing Infectious Disease Research across Nigeria (AIDRAN)’, Advancing Capacity for Epidemic Preparedness and Response in Nigeria (ACEPRIN), and the Strengthening Epidemic Response Systems-Plus (SERS-Plus) projects. She was the Principal Investigator of the AFD-funded Data4COVID19 Africa Challenge project in Nigeria.  

Dr. Ochu is the Project Director of the West African Regional ECHO on COVID-19 (W.A.R.E) whose hub is hosted by the NCDC.  Her major career goal is to facilitate the entrenchment of good science with collaborative research in Nigeria and in the African Continent