OSI Mourns the Loss of African AIDS Activist Omololu Falobi

All of us have to choose to respond to the challenges of our own times; for me, the challenge is HIV/AIDS.

—Omololu Falobi

Omololu Falobi, a partner and inspiration to OSI’s Public Health Program, passed away on October 5, 2006, in Lagos, Nigeria. Omololu, 35, was a prize-winning journalist and founding director of Journalists Against AIDS (JAAIDS), which works closely with the Public Health Program’s Public Health Watch and Health Media initiatives.

Omololu served as an African nongovernmental organization (NGO) delegate to the Programme Coordination Board of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and was a founding member of the Africa Civil Society Coalition.

An editorial in Nigeria’s Vanguard newspapers from October 19 states that Falobi "sensitized not only journalists but the public on the challenges of managing the HIV/AIDS virus. ..At a time that the world's attention keeps drifting from combating the menace of HIV/AIDS, especially in Africa, Falobi's death is a big loss to the tasking engagement of steadying the world's focus on a scourge that combines with poverty and illiteracy to devastate Africa.”

Omolulu was killed in an armed robbery on his way home after a speaking engagement promoting social responsibility.

Tribute spaces have been set up at http://omololu-falobi.blogspot.com and http://www.omololuinourhearts.org. The Black AIDS Institute, of which Omolou was a board member, has established a fund to help support Omololu’s family, including his wife, two young children, and mother. For more information on the fund, visit www.blackaids.org.