Chukwuyem Abejegah

Chukwuyem Abejegah is a public health and community medicine physician from Nigeria pursuing a DPhil in Clinical Medicine at the University of Oxford. His main research interests are on the epidemiology of infectious diseases majoring on mpox, Lassa fever and COVID-19. He is currently working on the clinical characterization of mpox in Nigeria.

Chukwuyem had his first degree in medicine and surgery from the Ambrose Alli University Ekpoma, Edo State Nigeria in 2008, he then proceeded to completing a six-year residency program in public health and community medicine in 2016, and was inducted as a fellow of the National Postgraduate Medical College of Nigeria, Public Health (FMCPH) and a trainer. He served as the consultant in charge of case management of Lassa fever, COVID-19 and mpox at the Federal Medical Centre, Owo Ondo State Nigeria and was frontline medical personnel in various outbreak responses. He is passionate about infection prevention and control during outbreak responses and investigations.

He previously served as the secretary to the COVID 19 Preparedness and Response committee, Federal Medical Centre, Owo Ondo State during the COVID 19 outbreak and as the CEPI- Field Implementation Technical Working Group for the Targeted Lassa epidemiological studies in preparation for clinical trials in affected countries. He was an adviser to WHO on Lassa fever Community Transmission Research Preparedness through Global outbreak Alert and Response Network (GOARN) and a member of the WHO global network of clinicians and Lassa Fever experts (that produced the WHO Guidance for Clinical Case Management of Lassa fever document 2018). He is a member of the National Working Technical working committee group for Case Management of Lassa fever (that produced the National Guidelines for Lassa fever Case management, 2018) and also a member of the National Working Technical working committee group for Infection Prevention and Control of Viral Hemorrhagic fevers (that produced the National Guidelines on Infection Prevention and Control of viral Hemorrhagic fevers, 2020).

He further pursued a Master’s degree in Public Health in 2022 at the University of Sunderland United Kingdom, graduating with a distinction. He has undertaken several continuous professional development courses in global health, humanitarian medicine, research ethics, and infection prevention and control.

Under the supervision of Dr Jake Dunning and Professor Piero Olliaro, at the Nuffield Department of Clinical Medicine, Pandemic Sciences Institute, his DPhil research focuses on the clinical characterization of mpox in Nigeria.

• Consultant in charge of the Case Management of Monkey pox Patients, Infectious Disease Hospital (IDH), Ondo State Ministry of Health, Akure Ondo State and Federal Medical Centre Owo: June 2022.
• Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Department of Community Medicine, Faculty of Clinical Sciences, University of Medical Sciences, Ondo City, Ondo State, Nigeria: April 2021 to October 2022

• Consultant in charge of the Case Management of COVID 19 Patients, Infectious Disease Hospital (IDH), Ondo State Ministry of Health, Akure Ondo State: May 2020 to October 2022
• Consultant in charge of the Management of Lassa Fever and Infectious Diseases Federal Medical Center Owo, Ondo State Nigeria. September 2017 to October 2022.