***CALL FOR PAPERS***

Call for papers for a special edition to honor Professor Olikoye Ransome-Kuti as a festschrift celebration for his contributions to primary health care and reproductive health

Olikoye Ransome-Kuti, MD, FRCP Edinburgh, former Minister of Health of Nigeria, died on June 1, 2003 at the age of 75 years.  In view of his immense contributions in promoting primary health care and best health practices more broadly in Nigeria and globally, the African Journal of Reproductive Health (AJRH) has considered it worthwhile to devote a special edition to celebrate his memory and his contributions to health promotion.  The special edition will be released to the general public on September 31, 2023 on the eve of the 20^th year anniversary of his death.

The lifetime and the contributions made to health by Olikoye Ransome-Kuti have been well elucidated in an obituary by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh¹. He was a professor of Pediatrics at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital in Nigeria, the Director of the Institute of Child Health of the University, and the chief proponent of the principle and practice of primary health care in Africa, soon after the Alma Ata declaration in 1978.

He functioned in multiple capacities in Nigeria in consolidating and deepening the practice of primary health care.  As the country’s Health Minister for over  7 years (from 1985 to 1992), and the Chair of the National Primary Health Care Development Agency, he took Nigeria’s health care system to its highest level of development. He founded the Society for Family Health in 1983, which has become one of Nigeria’s leading providers and chief proponent of family planning.  Described as the “best Minister of Health that Nigeria has ever had”, his legacies and performances in exemplifying phenomenal foundational principles and trajectories in health care have remained legendary till this day.

It is within this context that the AJRH is fielding a special edition to celebrate this African icon, mentor, and role model who contributed immensely to consolidate the disciplines for which the journal is passionate, and which remain relevant for Africa’s development.  The  AJRH was established in 1997, and currently ranks as Africa’s leading journal that focusses on sexual and reproductive health and rights. The journal is published monthly and is available as an open-access publication in eight websites as well as in PubMed.

With the theme “documenting the legacies of Olikoye Ransome-Kuti in Africa’s health evolution”, this special edition of the journal, will feature articles that document the practice of primary health care in Africa and those with implications for the African region, especially papers that highlight Professor Ransome-Kuti’s contributions to the discipline, and how his ideas have helped the process of change in health care delivery over the years. We particularly welcome papers that document the history of his struggles for health care improvement in his lifetime, and the types of consequential lessons that have evolved for training, research, and clinical delivery in Africa and other parts of the world.  

Given Professor Ransome-Kuti’s professional interest in child health and social development, we welcome papers that focus on early childhood development, girl child development, and adolescent reproductive health, especially within the context of the rights and equality of persons embodied in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Papers addressing cross-cutting issues such as family planning, maternal mortality, gender, human rights, health care leadership and professionalism are also welcome particularly as they connect with the principles of primary health care and the social responsibility of governance. 

We welcome manuscripts based on commentaries, case/case series analysis, systematic reviews, meta-analyses, original research papers, and interventional/translational research in the fields listed above. Although the journal is bilingual (published English and French) we prefer that all papers for this edition should be in English, while the accompanying abstracts will be centrally translated to French in the editorial office.

We recommend that authors should follow the format for writing papers for the journal which can be retrieved from the journal website at www.ajrh.info, while recently published articles can also be reviewed and read from the website.

The time table for submission of manuscripts for the special edition is presented below:

Last date for receipt of articles in the journal office – April 31, 2023

Last date for receipt of revised and final articles  - May 31, 2023

Date of release and hybrid launch of the special edition – September 31, 2023

Articles can be submitted through the journal website at www.ajrh.info, or emailed directly to the editorial office (africanjournalofreproductiveh@gmail.com), with all submissions marked “submission for special Olikoye Ransome-Kuti edition”

For further information, please contact the editor-in-chief at feokonofua@yahoo.co.uk, and/or the Senior Managing Editor at karl4rich@gmail.com and africanjournalofreproductiveh@gmail.com