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News/Event Item
Olikoye Ransome-Kuti Dies
3 June 2003
By Jennifer Hyman, Global Health Council
Nigeria's "father of primary healthcare," Olikoye Ransome-Kuti, died on June 1, apparently of natural causes, while attending a professional engagement in London, the Global Health Council has learned. Professor Ransome-Kuti, chairman of the Interim Executive Board of the African Council for Sustainable Health Development (ACOSHED), was 76-years-old.
According to a press statement issued by ACOSHED, at the time of his death, Prof. Ransome-Kuti was in London attending a Steering Committee meeting of the Global Health Leadership Program of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Prof. Ransome-Kuti was an influential public health advocate in Nigeria, throughout Africa and around the world. Appointed by the military regime of Gen. Ibrahim Babangida, Ransome-Kuti served as Nigeria's Minister of Health from 1985-1993, and was a forceful champion for improving health-care quality, access and child immunization rates. He spent a large portion of his tenure as Health Minister fighting tobacco companies and, in 1989, successfully won a battle mandating cigarette packages bear health warnings of tobacco's harmful consequences.
His numerous professional achievements included serving on the WHO Expert Advisory Panel on Maternal and Child Health from 1968-1975, founding the Lagos State HIV/AIDS Foundation, chairing the National AIDS Committee, and serving as a health-care consultant to the Ugandan, Zambian and Ethiopian governments. Most recently, Ransome-Kuti was the Interim Executive Board Chair of the African Council for Sustainable Health Development [ACOSHED], a partnership between African civil society, governments, private sector and development partners.
Not only was Ransome-Kuti highly respected for his role in improving African healthcare systems, but also he was enormously influential in helping to reduce HIV/AIDS stigma, by openly discussing how the disease was infecting youth as early as 1986 and, in 1997, talking about his brother Fela's death from HIV/AIDS-related complications.
Related Article
Olikoye Ransome-Kuti, 76, Dies
http://allafrica.com/stories/200306030031.html
African Council for Sustainable Health Development
http://www.acoshed.net/
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category: News from Other Sources : General Health News
contributed by Andrea Welch on 3 June 2003
Africa : Nigeria
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