Uche Amazigo comes from humble origins, but this daughter of a chauffeur earned a doctorate in public health and is working with the World Health Organization on the challenge of controlling onchocerciasis, widely known as river blindness. A soft-spoken, elegant woman in her fifties, Dr Amazigo, who became director of APOC in 2005, developed an interest in onchocerciasis because of its most destructive symptom. Working as a lecturer on tropical diseases in the university town of Nsukka in the late 1970s, Dr Amazigo had a chance encounter with a pregnant woman who was plagued by the disease's characteristic itchy lesions and striking depigmentation, and whose husband had left her due to these disfiguring effects. Moved and deeply saddened by the woman's predicament, Dr Amazigo resolved to help pay for her treatment and to learn more about how the disease destroyed lives. She enrolled in a local rural women's group to hear firsthand about the consequences of onchocerciasis, a...
ACCLAIMING PEOPLE OF IGBO DESCENT