Osotimehin, UNFPA ED dies at 68

The Executive Director, United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), Prof. Babatunde Osotimehin, is dead.

Aged 68, Osotimehin, hailed from Ijebu-Igbo, Ogun State.

According to a statement by Dr. Babajide Osotimehin on behalf of the family on Monday, the elder Osotimehin died on Sunday.

The late Osotimehin was appointed on Nov. 19, 2010, as the Executive Director of UNFPA for a four-year term and assumed the position on Jan. 1, 2011.

He was reappointed to this position on Aug. 21, 2014, to become the organisation’s fourth executive director.

He holds the rank of Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations.

Osotimehin served previously as Nigeria’s Minister of Health between Dec. 17, 2008, and March 10, 2010.

He attended Igbobi College between 1966 and 1971, and after his medical studies at University of Ibadan, received a doctorate in Medicine from the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom, in 1979.

Before his appointment at UNFPA, Osotimehin was the Director-General of the Nigerian National Agency for the Control of AIDS (NACA), an agency that coordinates all HIV and AIDS work in a country with more than 150 million people.

As chairman of the National Action Committee on AIDS (NACA) he oversaw the development of systems that, today, manage more than US$1billion.

During his tenure as Project Manager for the World-Bank assisted HIV/AIDS Programme Development Project from 2002–2008, he achieved great success.

Osotimehin’s interests include youth and gender, within the context of reproductive health and rights.

“We need to ensure that young people of both genders have equal participation, not only in reproductive rights and health but also within society and in the economy,” he said in a 2005 article in the New York Times.

He noted that nearly 58 per cent of Nigerians with H.I.V. were female.

Many girls in Nigeria are married off before they are physically or psychologically ready, when they are as young as 13 or 14. It is not acceptable for them to ask their partners to use a condom or to refrain from sex.

Later that year, he said that the government had ordered an increase to 250,000 of the number of HIV-positive people on Nigeria’s antiretroviral treatment programme.

He believed humility was the key to engaging people and facilitating change.

Said he:  “Humility to engage with the other person of the other community in such a way that they know that you respect them’’.

Cultural sensitivity and understanding are also vital.

He is survived by a wife, five children and three grandchildren.

Osotimehin held various positions prior to the UNFPA appointment, including: African Spokesperson, Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health, Minister of Health, Nigeria, December 2008 – March 2010; Director-General, Nigerian National Agency for the Control of AIDS, March 2007 – December 2008; Chairman, National Action Committee on AIDS, Nigeria, July 2002 – March 2007; Project Manager, HIV/AIDS Programme Development Project (World Bank-Assisted), 2002–2008 [9]; Chairman, Project Governing Board, Joint Regional HIV/AIDS Project in the Abidjan–Lagos Transport Corridor, 2003–2008 ; Vice-President, 14th International Conference on AIDS and STIs in Africa (ICASA), 2005 and Chairman, Committee of Presidential Advisers of AIDS Watch Africa.

He was Member, Policy and Strategy Committee, The Global Fund for AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria; Member, Global Steering Committee on Universal Access; Coordinator, the Social Sciences and Reproductive Health Research Network, Ibadan, Nigeria (an interdisciplinary network comprising sociologists, economists, doctors, lawyers, psychologists and human nutritionists dedicated to applying innovative research techniques to reproductive health and human development); Provost, College of Medicine, University of Ibadan, 1990–1994 and Professor of Clinical Pathology, College of Medicine, University of Ibadan, 1980.

As Nigeria’s Minister of Health, Osotimehin united all 36 states to build a national health plan focused on primary health care.