Professor Adegoke Gbadegesin Falade Brief Bio
Professor Adegoke Gbadegesin Falade was born on 25 April 1955 in Osogbo, Nigeria, though his family roots lie in the historic town of Ilesha in Osun State. He began his formal education at St Mary’s Primary School, Osogbo, progressed to St. Charles Grammar School for his O‑Level studies and completed his A‑Levels at Government College, Ibadan. Awarded a Federal Government Scholarship, he entered the University of Ibadan in 1973 and graduated in 1978 with the Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery degree.
Early in his career, he held Lecturer and Consultant Paediatrician positions at Olabisi Onabanjo University and Oni Memorial Children's Hospital. From 1990 to 1992, he joined the Medical Research Council Laboratories in The Gambia as a Research Clinician. Here, his pioneering investigations into childhood malnutrition and community‑acquired pneumonia laid the groundwork for his MD thesis and established him as a rigorous clinical researcher. In 1992, he was appointed Lecturer at the Department of Paediatrics, College of Medicine, University of Ibadan and Honorary Consultant Paediatrician at the University College Hospital (UCH), Ibadan; he rose to full Professor of Paediatric Pulmonology in October 2001, led the Department of Paediatrics from 2006 to 2009, and for a decade chaired the UCH Morbidity & Mortality Review Committee.
Professor Falade’s research has profoundly shaped paediatric respiratory care in low‑resource settings. His landmark work identifying pneumococcal disease as a leading cause of child mortality in Nigeria informed national immunisation and treatment policies. As principal investigator on the Gates‑funded Oxygen Implementation Project in Nigeria and Papua New Guinea, he demonstrated that routine pulse oximetry and reliable oxygen delivery can dramatically reduce childhood deaths. Most recently, he co‑led the OxyMate Trial, reporting the life‑saving benefits of automated oxygen titration for preterm infants.
He has contributed to the International Study of Asthma and Allergy in Childhood (ISAAC), the Global Asthma Network, the WHO Neonatal Sepsis Study, the PERCH pneumonia aetiology project and the INSPIRING community‑intervention study in Lagos and Jigawa. He presides over the Oxygen for Life Initiative, which has installed oxygen systems in ten hospitals and reduced hypoxaemia‑related child mortality by 40% in pilot sites.
In recognition of his achievements, Professor Falade was elected Fellow of the Nigerian Academy of Science in 2025. He equally holds the fellowships of the Nigerian Postgraduate Medical College and the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. He has served on expert panels for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s pneumonia consultations, the UNICEF Oxygen Therapy Technical Review Group and the Lancet Global Health Commission on Oxygen Security. He has held leadership positions of professional bodies. He was the President of the Nigerian Society for Paediatric Infectious Diseases (1999–2009), Vice‑President of the African Society for Paediatric Infectious Diseases (2012–2021) and Foundation Member of the International Pediatric Academic Leaders’ Association.
As a passionate mentor, he has supervised over twenty postgraduate students, many of whom now lead paediatric services and research in Nigeria. With more than a hundred and twenty peer‑reviewed publications, his work continues to guide evidence‑based practice, inform policy and improve paediatric health systems across Africa. Outside the hospital and laboratory, he is devoted to his wife, Adejoke Elizabeth, and their four children, sharing with them the pride of a career that has transformed child health in Nigeria and beyond.