Remembering Olikoye Ransome Kuti (1927-2003): An inimitable public health physician and a tireless advocate of primary health care

Abstract

Some life experiences appear to give credence to the Latin phrase tempus fugit. For, it is indeed startling that 20 years have passed since the news broke of the demise of Professor Olikoye Ramsone Kuti, at 75, in a London hospital on June 1, 2003, from pulmonary embolism, while attending a meeting convened by the World Health Organisation (WHO)1 . Were he to be alive, he would be a 95- year-old nonagenarian this year. Truly, time flies and passes surprisingly quickly. I was vice-chancellor of the University of Port Harcourt at the time Olikoye Ransome-Kuti died. Indeed, on that day, I was in Mississauga, Canada, a posh, affluent suburb of Toronto whose exclusive class of population and beguiling beauty stood in sharp contrast to the high-rise and bustle that characterised downtown Toronto. Sixty of us from different countries had been invited under the auspices of the Canadian Institutes of Health to attend a meeting on Global Health Research Initiative which was originally scheduled to hold in the city of Toronto. The meeting had to be moved to Mississauga to assuage some participants’ unease regarding the public health measure of quarantine, occasioned by the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) - a viral respiratory disease caused by a SARS-associated coronavirus- an outbreak of which had occurred in China in early 2003 and had spread to other countries, including Canada.