Obiageli Nnodu
Professor/Director
Professor Obiageli Eunice Nnodu is Professor of Haematology and Blood Transfusion at the University of Abuja, Nigeria, Founding Director of its Centre of Excellence for Sickle Cell Disease Research and Training (CESRTA), and Honorary Consultant Haematologist at the University of Abuja Teaching Hospital. A Fellow of the West African College of Physicians, she had international fellowships at Imperial College London, the Karolinska Hospital in Stockholm, and the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda.
Her work centres on improving outcomes for people living with sickle cell disease in Africa, where the burden is highest. She helped develop Nigeria’s national strategy for sickle cell disease control and has championed newborn screening, through which thousands of infants across Nigeria and other African countries have been screened using both standard and low-cost diagnostic technologies.
She is National Coordinator of the American Society of Hematology’s Consortium on Newborn Screening in Africa (CONSA) and Nigeria’s Principal Investigator in the Sickle Pan African Research Consortium (SPARCO) and contributed to the inclusion of point-of-care sickle cell tests in the WHO Essential Diagnostics List. Named among the world’s top scientists in 2025, she is also Chairman of the Sickle Cell Support Society of Nigeria.
