Dr. Faisal Shuaib, MBBS, MPH, DrPH, is the Executive Director/Chief Executive Officer of Nigeria’s National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA). He holds a medical degree from the famous Ahmadu Bello University Zaria, Nigeria as well as a Doctor of Public Health degree from the University of Alabama at Birmingham USA, where he graduated with distinction.
Prior to his appointment by President Muhammadu Buhari in January 2017, he was a Senior Program Officer at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) in Seattle, USA and was charged with the responsibility of developing and implementing strategies on polio outbreak response activities including ensuring certification standard surveillance for Acute Flaccid Paralysis in Africa.
Dr. Shuaib served as the Incident Manager/Head of the Nigeria Ebola Emergency Operation Center during the July – October 2014 outbreak of Ebola Virus Disease. In this position, he coordinated a team of over 1,000 health workers and volunteers in the country’s response to the outbreak. In addition to serving as a Senior Technical Advisor to the Minister of State for Health on Immunization and Polio Eradication, he was also the Chief Operations Officer/Deputy Incident Manager of the National Polio Emergency Operation Center. It was during his time in this role that the polio eradication team dealt the most critical blow that has brought Nigeria close to eradicating polio. Lessons from his experiences have been published as a government-led approach for containment of Ebola and Polio in Low-Resource Settings using Principles and Practices of Emergency Operations Centers in Public Health.
During his time at the Gates Foundation, Dr. Shuaib conceptualized and led the effort to develop the AVADAR application. The AVADAR, that is, Auto-Visual AFP Detection and Reporting Application is a novel SMS-based smartphone application that is used to improve acute flaccid paralysis (AFP) surveillance in Nigeria and many other African countries where it has been introduced.
Dr. Shuaib’s career also includes experience working with the WHO, Nigeria Ministry of Health, and the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He has authored and co-authored over 60 peer reviewed scientific publications, and is also a reviewer for a number of scientific journals. He is happily married and lives in Abuja, Nigeria.