Dimie Ogoina, Nigerian professor of medicine, makes Time’s 100 most influential people list

Dimie Ogoina, a Nigerian doctor, has been named in Time Magazine’s list of 100 most influential people for 2023.

Time Magazine’s annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world, accords recognition to people “for changing the world, regardless of the consequences of their actions”.

The list, released on Thursday, placed the individuals in five categories: Titans, pioneers, innovators, artists, leaders, and icons.

Ogoina, a professor of medicine and infectious diseases at the Niger Delta University, Bayelsa, is named alongside Kylian Mbappé, French soccer player, Monica Simpson, activist, and others in the ‘innovators’ category.

The report described Ogoina as a passionate champion for global health equity, who often pointed out that a global outbreak of Mpox could have been avoided, had the world paid attention sooner.

“In 2017, when Dr. Dimie Ogoina sounded the alarm on a new presentation of Mpox (formerly known as monkeypox) that he was seeing in his home country of Nigeria, the world wasn’t ready to listen,” the report reads.

“Recognizing the importance and potential implications for global spread, he persisted, documenting the potential for sexual transmission of Mpox and publishing the data in high-impact scientific journals. As the global Mpox outbreak unfolded in 2022, Dimie’s insights became critically important to developing better strategies to prevent and control outbreaks.”

The professor currently serves as chief medical director of Niger Delta University Teaching Hospital and as president of the Nigeria infectious diseases society.

Ogoina and his team were said to have diagnosed and managed the first reported Mpox case during Nigeria’s 2017 outbreak.

Bola Tinubu, the president-elect, was also named in Time Magazine’s list of 100 most influential people for 2023 in the leader category.

The report described him as a “longtime political power broker” who seems “aware of his inheritance” in form of a “litany of crises in a fractured nation, including deep-rooted corruption, religious insurgencies, and shortages of cash, fuel, and power in a crumbling economy”.

The development has since drawn criticism from Nigerians on social media.