Nigerian Professor of Infectious Disease Epidemiology, Ibrahim Abubakar, has been awarded the 2023 Roux Prize for his “dedication to improving health outcomes over the last three decades”.
The Roux Prize is awarded by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington’s School of Medicine.
As the 2023 Roux Prize winner, Mr. Abubakar, who is the Dean of the Faculty of Population Health Sciences at the University College London (UCL), received $100,000 at the award ceremony held on 12 October, 2023 in London.
According to the UCL, the award is to reinforce his efforts to support health systems in Nigeria and Africa’s Sahel region, benefitting some of the world’s poorest countries, among other significant global health programmes.
In his remarks, Chris Murray, the director of IHME, said Mr. Abubakar has been steadfast in his contributions to global health, adding that “his expertise and advocacy have directly affected policy implementation and the lives of millions of people”.
The director noted that Mr. Abubakar embodies exactly what the Roux Prize represents: innovation, ambition, and collaboration.
“The world of public health is a stronger place because of his ongoing contributions and commitment to change.”
According to UCL, Mr. Abubakar’s greatest achievement is his recent work on The Lancet Nigeria Commission, which directly led to Nigeria passing a new law mandating basic health insurance and the creation of a vulnerable fund that covers 83 million underprivileged people.
In March 2022, he led an international multidisciplinary team on a comprehensive analysis of Nigeria’s health system supported by Global Burden of Disease (GBD) data, which identified critical gaps and offered recommendations in key areas to improve the health system.
According to Professor Ibrahim Abubakar:
“What drives me each day is the firm belief that the existence of health inequalities is not a given – it is within our reach to eliminate inequitable access to care if we work collectively to improve the lives and conditions of the most disadvantaged among us.
My career veered to population health after witnessing the ravaging effect of HIV and other infections on my patients. As a young doctor, I distinctly remember patients arriving in my ward and dying of a preventable form of meningitis. Most of these patients were too poor and had been failed by society.
I believe my subsequent achievements and persistent commitment to medicine and public health had a lot to do with the contrast I have seen all my life: what is possible with levels of opportunity and wealth and the unfairness of outcomes.”
UCL also noted that the professor has been instrumental in the development of health initiatives for tuberculosis (TB) and COVID-19.
As the head of TB in Public Health England in 2015, he developed a research programme that improved screenings.
He also chaired committees, such as the WHO Strategic Advisory Group for TB, that led to better diagnoses and increased access to treatment, contributing to a two per cent annual decline in new TB cases globally from 2015 to 2018.
In 2020, Mr. Abubakar was appointed as Scientific and Technical Adviser to the Nigeria Presidential Taskforce on COVID-19, where he organised a team that responded to daily requests for evidence and aided in developing the type and timing of national COVID-19 restrictions.
Mr. Abubakar wrote over 40 policy papers that ultimately served as a national vaccination policy and is also leading an international study on COVID-19 variants, which includes cohorts from Europe, South America, Africa, and Asia.
The Roux Prize is sponsored by IHME’s founding board member David Roux and his wife, Barbara, and recognises people worldwide for their innovative and impactful use of the Global Burden of Disease data.
Now in its 10th year, the Roux Prize has been recognising individuals all over the globe who have leveraged evidence-based health data to improve population health.
The IHME is an independent global health research organisation at the University of Washington School of Medicine that provides rigorous and comparable measurements of the world’s most important health problems and evaluates the strategies used to address them.
