Abdulsalami Nasidi, MD, Ph.D, is a physician with more than 32 years of experience in clinical medicine, public health, virology, and the development of vaccines and biological products. He currently serves as the Director General of the Nigerian Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), Chair of the EchiTAb Study group, Nigeria/UK, and Chair/Executive Officer of the Reach Care Foundation, Nigeria.

He headed the Federal Vaccine Production Laboratory in Yaba, Nigeria for 7 years during the 1980's; during this time, he introduced a new method for the production of yellow fever vaccine, which was used successfully for the control of the 1986/1987 yellow fever outbreak in Benue State, Nigeria. Appointed as Nigeria's Chief Epidemiologist in 1991, he helped develop disease surveillance and notification system and a monthly epidemiological bulletin. He was among 16 people who established the Global Fund to fight AIDS, TB, and Malaria, in Brussels, Belgium in 2002. He established Nigeria's Country Coordinating Mechanism and served as its Chair for six years, where he oversaw the development of proposals that generated more than $600 million for Nigeria's HIV/AIDS/AIDS, TB, and Malaria programs. He was appointed as the Chairman of the Presidential Task Force for Polio Eradication and routine immunization in 2008, which led to the reduction by more than 95% and virtual elimination of circulating wild poliovirus in Nigeria. He co-developed Hepatitis B vaccine and anti-snake venom against the carpet viper and two other Nigerian poisonous snakes. He headed the Nigerian health sector taskforce response to the H1N1 pandemic, and participated in designing the national response to the pandemic. With the outbreak of H1N1, he played an active role in establishing a Nigerian laboratory in Abuja capable of diagnosing the influenza viruses, which then became the WHO reference laboratory for the country.

Dr. Nasidi earned his medical degree from Kalinin State Medical School, Tver, Russia, and his doctoral degree from the Ivanovsky Institute of Virology, Academy of Medical Sciences, Moscow, Russia. He did his post-doctoral and attachments at Institute Pasteur, Paris, F.I. Kimball Research Institute, New York, Liberian Institute of Biomedical research and University of Berlin, Germany. He has authored more than 50 scientific publications and has been recognized by his country with a national honor, Officer of the Order of the Niger (OON).