Ayoola Alaba Olajide
Ayoola Alaba OLAJIDEΒ worked as a journalist with many newspapers in Nigeria before establishing theΒ African Sickle Cell News & World ReportΒ in 2008. His interest in the social research of blood disorders began with hisΒ M.SCΒ Psychology thesis,Β Anxiety and Depression in Sickle Cell AnaemiaΒ (1987, same year as an autobiographical sketch of his experience living with sickle cell disease was serialized in a major tabloid).
Olajide was formerly Publicity Secretary with Africa’s biggest sickle cell disease organization, the Sickle Cell Foundation, Nigeria, where he edited the organization’s in-house quarterly,Β Sickle Cell Bulletin
He has managed to makeΒ Sickle Cell NewsΒ visible and accessible to a global audience of readers. The magazine was in 2019 officially appointed βinternational media partnerβ with the Sickle Cell Disease Association of America Inc. The magazine has worked closely with many sickle cell disease charities globally and with the Thalassemia International Federation (TIF) Cyprus.
President of Ikorodu Sickle Cell Club, Nigeria, he has worked with medical professionals, teachers, civil servants, and a few of Nigeria’s State First Ladies- on sickle cell disease messages of hope, perseverance, and forbearance.
In pursuit of news and interviews forΒ Sickle Cell News, Olajide has traveled extensively across sub-Sahara Africa, including Ghana.