Title: Professor
Current Position/Designation: Professor of Paediatrics and Consultant Child Neurologist
Institutional Affiliation: College of Medicine, University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria AND University College Hospital, Ibadan, Nigeria
Active Email address: ilagunju@yahoo.co.uk
Telephone number: +234 8095538287
Professor IkeOluwa Lagunju is a Professor of Paediatrics at the College of Medicine, University of Ibadan and Consultant Paediatric Neurologist at the University College Hospital, Nigeria. She holds the Fellowship and the MD degree of the National Postgraduate Medical College of Nigeria, as well as the Fellowship of the West African College of Physicians and the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health. She is a Fellow of the prestigious Nigerian Academy of Medicine.
In addition to many other awards of distinction, she won the Bruce Schoenberg Award of the American Academy of Neurology in 2011. Prof. Lagunju pioneered the work on Transcranial Doppler (TCD) ultrasonography for primary stroke prevention in children with sickle cell disease in Nigeria and the programme has accomplished a remarkable reduction in the burden of childhood stroke in Nigeria. She has published over 100 articles. She is the immediate past President of the Child Neurology Society of Nigeria.
Professor IkeOluwa Lagunju is one of the leading Paediatric Neurologists in Nigeria. Her research interests cover childhood epilepsies and paediatric neurodisability. The last 20 years of her medical career have been devoted to the care of children with epilepsies, paediatric neurodisabilities and childhood strokes and translational research in the same area. Her work on epilepsy and cerebral palsy extensively covers various aspects of childhood epilepsies in Nigeria and her research output has provided insightful knowledge that form part of the basis for the national guidelines for the management, prognostication and multidisciplinary interventions for childhood epilepsy and cerebral palsy.
She pioneered the work on transcranial Doppler (TCD) ultrasonography for primary stroke prevention in Nigeria. Her research work provided the landmark definition of the pattern of stroke risk in Nigerian children with sickle cell disease. IkeOluwa provided convincing evidence that hydroxyurea significantly reduces TCD velocities, accompanied by greater than 10-fold decline in stroke risk. She has also worked extensively on strokes from other causes in the paediatric population in Nigeria.
As a step towards mitigating the burden of paediatric neurodisability in Nigeria, Prof. Lagunju led the development and validation of the Ibadan Simplified Developmental Screening (ISDS) chart for routine developmental screening in Nigerian infants to aid early recognition, early diagnosis and prompt intervention in children with developmental disabilities. She has published over 100 scholarly articles.