Olikoye Ransome-Kuti: Nigeria’s outstanding Minister of Health: A tribute

Abstract

Professor Olikoye Ransome-Kuti (ORK) was a man of many parts. He was a graduate of the University of Ibadan, Nigeria’s premier University, and a pediatrician by training. He was a humane person and was particularly concerned about the needless deaths of babies and children in Nigeria. He trained and served in Lagos early in his career. He introduced the Pakoto Community and Child Health Programme for the training of medical students at the University of Lagos. In 1983 along with two other Nigerians, he founded one of Nigeria's foremost health-focused non-governmental organizations – the Society for Family Health Nigeria (SFH), with the mission to promote best practices in family planning and child health services in the country. In 1985, he joined the government of General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida as the Minister of Health. In 1986, he announced Nigeria's first AIDS case, in a 14-yearold girl. He was Minister until 1992 when he joined the World Health Organization as its Deputy Director-General. As Minister, he re-invented primary health care as part of the essential health services scheme in the Nigeria’s healthcare system. He frequently lamented the poor state of the healthcare system. His popular refrain was that our teaching hospitals should, at the least, mirror, and function at the level of a General Hospital in the United Kingdom. He popularized the introduction of Oral Rehydration Solution (ORS) to rehydrate children suffering from diarrheal diseases and removed cough mixtures from our National Drug Formulary