Prof Akin Abayomi: One of the unseen hands fighting COVID-19 in Nigeria.
Neusroom’s Michael Orodare describes Prof Akin Abayomi, the man leading the Lagos COVID-19 response, as a perfect fit for the job.
Prof Akin Abayomi: One of the unseen hands fighting COVID-19 in Nigeria.
Written by Michael Orodare for Neusroom
27 May 2020
You could call it a coincidence or a confirmation of the level of intelligence and sound judgement of Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu, the appointment of Prof Akin Abayomi, who currently leads the Lagos State Health Ministry must be one of the best decisions he made in the first three months of his administration. It’s the type of decision that gives you bragging rights, makes you sit in your closet and beat your chest for getting it right.
He is a perfect fit for the job, his handling of the present public health crisis bears testament to this fact.
Despite parading an intimidating credential in medical practice with years of experience with top institutions in Europe and Africa, Prof Akin Emmanuel Abayomi, Lagos State Commissioner for Health, may probably not have envisaged that one day he would be leading the response of the most populous city in Nigeria at the center of a global health crisis.
A comment on Abayomi’s profile on Lagos Ministry of Health’s Facebook page on March 21, 2020 read: “Best man for the COVID-19 response in Lagos Nigeria…What a coincidence…” Whether a coincidence or not, Prof Abayomi has so far demonstrated that he is a perfect fit for the job. His past record also shows he is not a neophyte in the public healthcare system, and in leading public institutions.
His calm mien may have presented him as one in an unfamiliar turf and a man not fit into the mold of the public service, but Prof Abayomi’s past and present record in barely a year of managing the Lagos Health Ministry has proven that looks can be misleading.
It also revalidates the old parlance that a book should not be judged by its cover.
For those who described his appointment as a coincidence and a perfect fit for this time, they may not be wrong, long before his appointment as Commissioner, Abayomi played a crucial role in the establishment of the Lagos Biobank facility (designed to ensure effective management of infectious disease outbreaks) in Yaba. The facility became the state’s first point of call for collection of COVID-19 samples before the outbreak.
Governor Sanwo-Olu and Prof Abayomi. Photo: Lagos State Govt
In his lecture titled ‘Lagos in the Eye of Global Health, Biosecurity Preparedness,’ at the inauguration of the facility in December 2018, Abayomi had stated that the biobank was equipped with laboratories such as the biosafety level (BSL) 1 for normal laboratory procedures, BSL 2 for dangerous pathogens, and BSL 3 for very dangerous pathogens such as Ebola, Lassa, Zika. Barely two years after, the laboratory which he described as “the highest and most functional biosafety, biobank laboratory in Nigeria and West Africa”, was put into operation for COVID-19 response by Abayomi, he probably didn’t see that coming.
This also shows that before him, Lagos has always been at the forefront of an advanced health initiative, and since taking charge of the state’s health sector nine months ago, the standard has not fallen, instead it has continued to experience an upward spiral move. Under his supervision Lagos started cascading access to COVID-19 test centers across the 20 local government areas in the state. While no state in the country is yet to move close to achieving this feat, a week ago, the state also announced a plan to adopt homecare for patients.
Prof Abayomi’s speciality ranges from Internal Medicine, Haematology, Oncology, Environmental Health and Biosecurity. He bagged his first degree in medicine at the Royal Medical College of St Bartholomew’s Hospital in the University of London. He also obtained fellowships status from both Royal College of Medicine in the United Kingdom and the College of Medicine of South Africa. His experience working in several countries across the world has exposed him to a variety of geographical variations and disease patterns within the discipline of Internal Medicine and Haematology.
Prior to his appointment as Lagos Commissioner, he had garnered ample experience that prepared him for the bigger task of leading Lagos Health Ministry. He was Chief Pathologist and Head of the Division of Haematology at the University of Stellenbosch’s Faculty of Medicine Sciences in Cape Town, South Africa and as a Principal Investigator of the Global Emerging Pathogens Treatment (GET) Consortium, which was established during the Ebola virus outbreak to address biosecurity concerns in Africa.
Though, the COVID-19 pandemic may have dwarfed some of the laudable health initiatives introduced into the state healthcare system since August when he was sworn-in, it is worthy to note that under him the state developed a sustainable Smart Health Information Platform (SHIP) to interconnect all health facilities from the primary to secondary and tertiary institutions.
There have been increasing calls from Nigerians on the government to also look inward and develop local solutions to combat the COVID-19, the Commissioner in a recent interview on Arise TV revealed that Lagos has been doing just that. Beyond managing COVID-19 patients, Lagos is not folding its arms waiting endlessly to be spoon-fed with solutions from the West or China, Abayomi said the state is also embarking on research to understand the peculiarity of the virus and find solutions.
Sanwo-Olu and Abayomi inspect an isolation centre. Photo: Lagos State Govt.
Abayomi (right) receives Ihekweazu, NCDC DG on his recent visit to Lagos. Photo: @ProfAkinAbayomi on Twitter
“While a lot of our energy is being spent on responding, we are beginning to divert a significant amount of resources and energy into trying to understand how this virus functions in our functions and find our solutions in context with what is happening around the world,”
he said.
“You can’t just take research from China or America and transpose it immediately to Nigeria, it’s a different environment, people and genetics, so we have to study how the virus is affecting our people in Lagos and Nigeria, and find our solutions.”
The synergy between the Lagos Health Ministry team led by Abayomi and the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) under Dr Chikwe Ihekweazu in the management of the COVID-19 crisis has also attracted huge commendation. The two men have shown that when brilliance and competence are in sync, prompt and corrective measures to combat a crisis is assured.
