Obituary: Prof Baboo spent a lifetime improving Zambia's healthcare

Prof Sridutt Baboo

Prof Baboo with colleagues

By VICTOR KALALANDA, January 12, 2021

A DISTRESSFUL moment for University of Zambia Vice-Chancellor Prof Luke Mumba as he glances through a seemingly endless stream of text messages that he would receive from his now late professor friend, Sridutt Baboo.

It was last week Friday that the curtains were drawn on the friendly fellowship of the two professors after Prof Baboo succumbed to COVID-19, robbing Zambia of a top public health expert who served the country’s health sector for 41 years and published over 65 scientific articles during that time.

What had come to be Prof Baboo’s signature was platonic friendship, as confessed by Prof Mumba, who not only shared a drink and a good laugh with him, but had been a recipient of his early morning greetings which were often accompanied by a picture of flowers on WhatsApp.

He sent me these messages every day since 2016 when I assumed the vice-chancellor office. Every time he visited me he told me that ‘I’ll support you. I want you to succeed in this office,’ Prof Mumba recounts.

Prof Baboo’s messages trickled to a stop in the vice-chancellor’s inbox on Wednesday, and his very last text was an update on the latest cases of COVID, the very disease which would claim his life a day later.

Of Indian descent, Prof Baboo was born on October 10, 1943, and obtained his university education in India, where he studied for an undergraduate degree in physics, chemistry and biology, and later for the MBBS degree in medicine and surgery between 1962 and 1968.

With the prestigious M.D. qualification from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in 1975, the young Baboo would two years later join the University of Zambia as an academic, and he would until the time of his death serve the university and the country as an indefatigable trainer, researcher and practitioner in the fields of public health and tropical medicine.

Prof Baboo’s reputation as a leading global expert in infectious diseases and public health dates back to 1977 when he accompanied the WHO team for a smallpox eradication programme, which received full support from the government of former president Dr Kenneth Kaunda, who had issued a statutory instrument requiring all men, women and children to be given the smallpox vaccine.

It was this programme that marked the total eradication of smallpox because since then no case of the disease has been recorded in Zambia.

In 1989 he participated in the Sentinel Surveillance of HIV/AIDS in Zambia and published an article in the Zambian Medical Journal to define the Case Definition of HIV/AIDS.

Between 1988 and 1996, his services to the country were further extended when he became the chairman of the Coordinating Committee for Polio Eradication in Lusaka district, which was recognised by the Ministry of Health and the then vice-chancellor of the University of Zambia, the late Prof Andrew Siwela.

Prof Peter Mwaba, who worked closely with Prof Baboo in academia and voluntary charitable activities related to global public health priority issues, found the late University of Zambia scientist’s service to the country as enduring, given its impact.

I have come to appreciate his deep commitment and strategic focus, which are generally exemplary and visionary contributions, states Prof Mwaba.

Besides, as a member of Technical Committee for Prevention of Malaria through National Malaria control in 2003, Prof Baboo worked with KCM Malaria Model and implemented indoor residual spraying throughout Zambia, which brought down the incidence and prevalence of Malaria to zero level, attracting international partners such as WHO, CDC, World Bank and Global Fund to eradicate Malaria by 2035.

In 2003, the National AIDS Council selected Prof Baboo to be the Chairperson for the prevention of HIV/AIDS in Zambia.

From 2003 to 2015, three international conventions attended by more than 2000 local and international participants on each occasion were held. This was spearheaded by former presidents Rupiah Banda, Micheal Sata and Dr Kenneth Kaunda, with the result that there was considerable reduction in the levels of HIV/AIDS infections in Zambia.

From 1998 to 2001 he was elected chairman of the Ethics Committee of the University of Zambia, and in 2022 he was the recipient of the Fogerty International Scholarship which allowed him to be trained in the Bioethics and Human Subject Protection Programme through the Office of Human Subject Research Programme in the US until 2004.

Additionally, Prof Baboo was a specialist in Accreditation of Research Ethics Committees with OHRP USA, Good Clinical Practice and Federal Wide Assurance (FWA).

Throughout his more than four decades of service as an academic at the University of Zambia, Prof Baboo trained the vast majority of Zambia’s physicians and some of their children, who have gone on to serve at the highest levels in healthcare in Zambia and in the diaspora.

An example is Dr Francis Mupeta, who is the current head of the Infectious Diseases Unit at UTH and also the Case Management Lead for COVID-19 under the Zambia National Public Health Institute (ZNPHI).

I’m one of those proud products of Prof Baboo. He was a wonderful and great professor who left his homeland to come and live among us. Despite my age he took me as a friend, and one day he invited me for a drink and told me, ‘you’re a real man and a true leader,’ narrates Dr Mupeta.

At the time of his death, Prof Baboo was an advisor to the Ministry of Health and the University of Zambia in the prevention of COVID-19 in Zambia, and he was the Chairperson of the University of Zambia’s Honorary Higher Degree Award Committee which awarded the honorary doctorate to President Edgar Lungu for his tireless, dedicated and selfless service to the people of Zambia.

Aside from his numerous appointments, his distinguished service had earned him a combined total of eight local and international awards, representing a rare hefty CV, whose accomplished feats can only be fully told in a book.

He supported mentoring of hundreds of Zambian healthcare workers, scientists and facilitated numerous multi-country collaborations. He was widely respected not only as a teacher but an active contributor to many community charitable ventures including his work through the Lusaka Rotary Club. He had a charismatic personality and was a gentle, kind and considerate friend, with a great sense of humour, remembers Sir Prof Alimuddin Zumla, another top global health expert who worked closely with Prof Baboo on the the internationally renowned UNZA-UCLMS Research and Training Programme.

The late Prof Baboo died at the age of 77 and left behind a wife and two children.