Professor Adekile graduated from the University of Ibadan Medical School in 1973 and had his Pediatric Residency Training at the Obafemi Awolowo University Teaching Hospital, Ile-Ife Nigeria. He had his post-doctoral Fellowship in Pediatric Hematology in Howard University Hospital, Washington DC, USA in 1980-1981 during which time, he worked at the Comprehensive Sickle Cell Center under Drs. Roland Scotto. He established a sickle cell clinic in the Obafemi Awolowo University Teaching Hospital on his return to Nigeria in 1981. In 1990 he was the recipient of the Fogarty International Fellowship which took him to the Medical College of Georgia, Augusta, Ga, USA where he worked in Dr. Titus Huisman’s laboratory and the Comprehensive Sickle Cell Center. He moved to Kuwait in 1993 where, in addition to other responsibilities, he looks after patients with hemoglobinopathies in the country. He also runs a hemoglobin research laboratory in his department with facilities for hemoglobin quantitation and a full range of molecular studies. He is the Director of the Kuwait National Sickle Cell Disease Registry, which he established in 2010, the first and only such registry in the Middle East.
Professor Adekile has a unique perspective on sickle cell disease, having looked after and conducted research on 3 continents. He was awarded a PhD degree in Cell Biology from the University of Maastricht, Netherlands in 1996 based on his dissertation “Sickle Cell Anemia: Comparative Clinical and Molecular Studies of Nigerian and Kuwaiti Patients”. Some of his landmark contributions include his work on the spleen in sickle cell disease and various aspects of the phenotype in patients with the Arab/India haplotype and elevated Hb F. He is the recipient of several research grants and awards and has ~120 publications in internationally renowned journals. He is a member of many academic and professional bodies including the Nigerian Pediatric Association, Nigerian Society for Hematology and Blood Transfusion and American Society for Hematology. He serves on the Board of the Center for Arab Genomic Studies. He is one of the leaders in the Global Sickle Cell Disease Network where he is the co-
chairman of the working group on phenotypic variation. He has been an invited speaker at many local and international conferences and he is on the editorial boards of Hemoglobin and Medical Principles and Practice.
One of his proudest achievements has to be his involvement in establishing the Nigerian Sickle Cell Disease Network in 2010, which has brought together Nigerian doctors with interest in the disease both within the country and in the Diaspora. There has also been active involvement of others including nurses, NGOs and patients in the network, which has now metamorphosed into the Nigerian Society for Sickle Cell Support. It has been his privilege to be the founding president of the society.