Ayoola Alaba Olajide
Ayoola Alaba OLAJIDE worked as a journalist with many newspapers in Nigeria before establishing the African Sickle Cell News & World Report in 2008. His interest in the social research of blood disorders began with his M.SC Psychology thesis, Anxiety and Depression in Sickle Cell Anaemia (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, Sickle Cell Bulletin
He has managed to make Sickle Cell News visible and accessible to a global audience of readers. The magazine was in 2019 officially appointed “international media partner” 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 for Sickle Cell News, Olajide has traveled extensively across sub-Sahara Africa, including Ghana.