Adebola Olayinka

World Health Organization (WHO), Abuja, Nigeria

Adebola Olayinka is a medical doctor with a master’s in public health, a postgraduate fellowship in medical microbiology and field experience in the management/control of infectious hazards. She has years of technical and leadership experience in coordination and implementation of preparedness and response efforts to emerging and reemerging pathogens. Currently, she is with the World Health Organisation – Nigeria as a research officer and supports Nigeria in coordination of research on Lassa fever. She was Senior Technical Adviser/Consultant on Laboratory matters and helped set up the national Reference Laboratory for NCDC to provide laboratory support for disease surveillance and outbreak management. She was also one of the coordinators and IPC subcommittee lead of the Technical Working Group that developed the National antimicrobial resistance plan for Nigeria.

Prior to recent positions, Dr. Olayinka worked with the African Field Epidemiology Network as Resident Advisor to the Nigeria Field Epidemiology and Laboratory Training programme Nigeria. During this period, she trained nine cohorts of field epidemiologists, conducted national surveys, led infection prevention and control activities, and implemented the Laboratory track of the programme. She was Principal investigator of four (04) grants on development of an Infection Prevention and Control curriculum, protocol for surveillance of surgical site infections in Nigeria, multicountry Lassa epi project and multi country lab project on Total quality management. She built capacity by supporting research teams and coordinating relevant workshops with national technical working groups, national regulatory and ethics committees.

Dr. Olayinka worked with international partners to plan for and implement relevant public health research and supported the government on proposal writing, scientific writing, GCP workshops and oversight to ensure ethical conduct of research. She has been engaged in various clinical research activities especially on various aspects of antimicrobial resistance and infection control. She was Director and head of both the University and the teaching hospital medical/clinical microbiology departments and was Director to a Harvard/PEPFAR supported HIV Laboratory. She has provided IPC technical assistance to countries (Sierra Leone, Gambia, Ghana) during epidemics of Ebola, COVID-19, and Marburg as part of the WHO regional response and coordinated the case management pillar of the Nigeria Ebola Emergency Operations Center during the Nigerian Ebola epidemic. She is a trainer of undergraduate and postgraduate students in medical microbiology.