Dr Chijioke Kaduru is a native of Obiangwu in Ngor Okpala Local Government Area of Imo State. The young man has not only shown that bit is important that charity should begin at home but practically demonstrates it in his numerous philanthropic activities in his community and local government.
As the Chairman of the Nkwa Chi Kwere Community Development Foundation, a grassroots foundation which supports health, education, and economic empowerment in Nigeria, he has been directly involved in the construction of a new Primary Health Centre, provision of no-interest business loans to qualified graduates as well as supporting them to develop business plans to improve their income in his community in Obiangwu, Imo State. He facilitated WAEC registration of students, implemented solarisation projects as well as empowering widows and the less privileged in his local government and beyond.
Dr Chijioke Kaduru has spent the last seventeen years in public health programme management, with over ten of those years working in public health in low- and middle-income countries. He is a public health physician and holds advanced degrees in public health and infectious disease epidemiology.
He has worked over the years in improving child survival, combating infectious diseases, and working towards gender equality, through leading performance management of relevant programmes, supporting policy and systems research, strengthening sub-national capacity for infectious disease control, and implementing communications for development interventions. He has worked and continues to work as a lead investigator across several large-scale research projects in Africa including randomised controlled trials with Gavi, different implementation research pieces with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and observational and interventional studies with UNICEF, Sabin, the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Development Office, and many others. He has several publications in peer reviewed journals and maintains faculty affiliations in Nigeria and abroad.
Dr Kaduru has worked extensively in polio eradication and routine immunisation, helping deliver transformational results in Nigeria and in sub-Saharan Africa. From supporting the deployment of human resources for polio outbreak responses, through mobilising domestic resources for polio eradication and routine immunisation activities, to leading work in planning, implementing, measuring, and learning for immunisation campaigns and routine immunisation.
He has worked extensively on the journey to ending polio and other vaccine preventable diseases in Nigeria and on the continent. Over the years he has also provided technical leadership for State Ministries of Health in Nigeria to attract wins in the performance-based saving one million lives programme for results, helping mobilise millions of dollars in additional resources to support health systems strengthening efforts. He was instrumental in mobilising nearly $200m for Nigeria’s National Public Health Institute to strengthen emergency preparedness and response to COVID-19 and other outbreak prone diseases. He has also provided technical leadership for many convenings to drive action for health systems strengthening including state health summits, national family planning conferences, the first national citizen-led convening to review the performance of the Basic Healthcare Provision Fund in Nigeria, and several regional health and disease-specific summits.
Dr Kaduru is currently the Managing Director at Corona Management Systems, an indigenous Nigerian public health research and consulting group which has expanded into Kenya, Cameroon, Lesotho, Congo, Gambia, and Djibouti, and has also established account offices in Europe and in North America. Dr Kaduru and his team continue to support health systems across sub-Saharan Africa to strengthen policy implementation, mobilise resources, test business, social, and technological innovations, and undertake research towards building strong and resilient health systems.
The Ngor Okpala born medical practitioner is optimistic about maximising the potential of health systems in low- and middle-income countries, experience in delivering improved health and social development outcomes. Based on his belief in the potential of these existing systems, He has worked over the years to leverage these systems to improve child survival and work towards gender equality through policy research, supporting vaccination programmes, strengthening family planning programmes, implementing communications for development interventions, and implementing women’s economic empowerment interventions. As a UN Women trained Gender Specialist, Chijioke strongly believes that applying a gender lens to the continued and consistent commitment of resources to strengthen these health systems is the most impactful broad-based strategy to ultimately delivering health and social good.
Giving back to the society especially communities with low income and habouring a large number of poor people deprived of adequate health care makes Dr Kaduru an extraordinary Nigerian whose benevolence has placed him on the sands of time.
