By Baron Ike (With agency report)
Former minister of health and the Executive Director of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), Prof. Babatunde Osotimehin, is dead.
He reportedly died on Sunday, June 4 and was aged, 68, according to his family. He was borne on February 6, 1949.
A two paragraph statement issued on Monday, June 5 by Dr. Babajide Osotimehin on behalf of the family, confirmed he died on Sunday.
The family said the burial of the former Nigerian minister of health would be announced later.
The late Osotimehin attended the UN, National Agency for the Control of AIDS, (NACA) with President Muhammadu Buhari last year September in New York.
Osotimehin, was the Director General of National Agency for Control of AIDS (NACA) before he became health minister and was also a former Provost of the College of Medicine at the University of Ibadan.
He became the CEO of UNFPA on November 19, 2010 to serve a four-year term and was re-appointed on August 21, 2014.
According to ranking, he holds the rank of Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations.
Late Osotimehin attended Igbobi College between 1966 and 1971.
After his medical studies at University of Ibadan, he received a doctorate in medicine from the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom, in 1979.
Ostotimehin consistently advanced the cause of youth and gender, within the context of reproductive health and rights while he was alive and active.
A national of Nigeria, Osotimihin was appointed on November 19, 2010 as the new Executive Director of UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, for a four-year term.
He was reappointed to this position on August 21, 2014
He holds the rank of Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations.
Previously, he was Nigeria’s Minister of Health. He left this office in March 2010 when Acting President Goodluck Jonathan dissolved his cabinet.
Osotimehin was born in February 1949 in Ogun State. He attended Igbobi College between 1966 and 1971. After his medical studies at University of Ibadan, he received a doctorate in medicine from the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom, in 1979.
Prior to his appointment at UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, Osotimenhin served as the Minister of Health of Nigeria. Before that he was the Director-General of the Nigerian National Agency for the Control of AIDS, an agency that coordinates all HIV and AIDS work in a country with more than 150 million people.
As chairman of 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.
Ostotimehin’s interests include youth and gender, within the context of reproductive health and rights. Young people will be his special focus at UNFPA. “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.”
In a 2005 article in the New York Times, he noted that nearly 58 per cent of Nigerians with H.I.V. are 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 program.
He believes humility is the key to engaging people and facilitating change, “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 married and has five children and three grandchildren.