Dr Aminu Mahmoud Umar

Dr. Aminu Mahmoud Umar is a Nigerian public health physician, malaria programme leader, and specialist in malaria elimination strategy, programme coordination, and implementation. He is widely recognized for his leadership within Nigeria’s National Malaria Elimination Programme (NMEP), particularly as the key technical and programme lead for the Larval Source Management (LSM) implementation, as well as for leading the re-introduction of the Affordable Diagnostics and Medicines Facility for malaria (ADMFm).

He currently serves as Assistant Director and Head of the Programme Management Branch at the National Malaria Elimination Programme, Federal Ministry of Health and Social Welfare, Nigeria. In this capacity, he provides high-level technical, administrative, and strategic coordination support across the programme, ensuring that malaria interventions are effectively aligned with national policies, programme priorities, and evidence-based implementation frameworks. He also plays a leading role in the development of major national policy and strategic documents, including the National Malaria Policy and the National Malaria Strategic Plan.

Dr. Umar has made significant contributions to advancing Nigeria’s malaria elimination agenda through the design, coordination, and implementation of innovative, multisectoral, and large-scale interventions. As programme lead for Nigeria’s largest LSM implementation, he coordinated a landmark vector-control initiative that brought together government institutions, development partners, technical agencies, and other stakeholders to address mosquito breeding sites as part of an integrated malaria prevention and control strategy. His leadership in the re-introduction and implementation of ADMFm has also strengthened access to affordable malaria diagnostics and quality-assured medicines, thereby supporting improved malaria case management and service delivery across the country.

His professional expertise spans malaria programme management, policy development, partnership coordination, stakeholder engagement, capacity building, knowledge management, monitoring and evaluation, surveillance support, vector-control implementation, case-management interventions, and campaign effectiveness. He has served in key secretariat and technical roles for major national and continental malaria initiatives, including the Advisory on Malaria Elimination in Nigeria (AMEN), the Malaria Elimination Task Force (METF), the Malaria Technical Working Group (mTWG), the Rethinking Malaria Initiative, and the Big Push Against Malaria initiative. He has also contributed to the Collaboration Action Strategy for Campaign Effectiveness, the 2024 Verbal and Social Autopsy Survey, the 2025 Nigeria Malaria Indicator Survey, and the implementation of Seasonal Malaria Chemoprevention across multiple states in northern Nigeria.

Dr. Umar holds an MBBS from Bayero University Kano, an MSc in International Public Health from the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, and an MPhil and PhD from the University of Salford, Manchester. His work continues to strengthen malaria programming, policy translation, implementation capacity and elimination efforts in Nigeria and across the wider African malaria elimination landscape, and is in alignment with the vision and mission of the CTID^R.