Charles Okafor

Charles’ recent research focused on the economic evaluation of healthcare interventions to inform decision-making. His experience gained him an opportunity to prepare a policy brief on rotavirus vaccination scale-up for the Copenhagen Consensus Center, USA Inc. at the 2019 Global Grand Challenges Summit to identify best buys for Africa. This effort supported the rotavirus vaccine introduction in Nigeria in 2022 after publishing results in 2021. The vaccine phase-1 implementation was successful in the nineteen northern states of Nigeria where the disease burden is high. The country expects to reduce at least 40% of morbidity and mortality associated with rotavirus infections among children. Other countries yet to introduce the vaccine in sub-Saharan Africa are currently considering its introduction.

He collaborated with the Australian Orthopaedic Association National Joint Replacement Registry to verify the cost-benefit of the registry to provide justification for its significant cost. The outcome of the project will ensure data quality of the registry, validity, and data analysis which will facilitate clinical improvement and safe innovation in arthroplasty surgeries.

Charles' recent project on the Maternal and Child Health Support program initiative has demonstrated the feasibility of engaging proprietary and patent medicine vendors to mitigate the high rate of under-five mortality rate in Nigeria. This initiative has been adopted as a policy but translation to practice is yet to be widely implemented.