Professor Frederick T Sai

Professor Frederick T. Sai, a Ghanaian physician, educated in the Universities of London, Edinburgh, and Harvard in an internationally recognised authority on health nutrition population and family planning, particularly in Africa. He is currently an honorary professor of community health in the University of Ghana Medical School. As chairman of the National Population Council, he is an advisor to the Ghana Medical School. As chairman of the National Population Council, he is an advisor to the Ghana Government on family planning and population; he is a consultant to the World Bank on population issues in Africa and president of the International Planned Parenthood Federation, (IPPF).
He has held important position both in Ghana and internationally. He was director of medical services as well as professor of community health in Ghana and was one of those who founded the Ghana Family Planning Association and helped develop Ghana’s Population Policy. He continues to help the Association with its programmes, particularly those on adolescent reproductive health and improvement in the role and status of women.
He served as nutrition advisor to the FAO regional office in Africa for three years (1963-1966), during which he travelled extensively in Africa to stimulate the interest of governments in the importance of human nutrition in national development planning. In the late 1970’s (1978-1981), he worked as coordinator for Africa, Europe and the Caribbean for the World Hunger Project of the United Nations University and helped promote post graduate training and research in food science and nutrition.
As vice president, and later assistant secretary general for forward planning and external relations for the IPPE (1972-1978), he was one of those who helped to initiate and the expand community based family planning services within the Federation.
As senior population advisor at the World Bank (1985-1990) he worked tirelessly to get the Bank to increase its commitment to population and family planning activities and to work more closely with NGOs.
He has consulted for many organizations in different parts of the world. He has participated actively in, and chaired or rapporteured many international meetings. Professor Sai chaired the WHO/UNICEF Infant and Young Child Feeding Conference in 1979 which led to the development of the International Code on Marketing of Breast Milk Substitudes; he was moderator for the Safe Motherhood Conference of 1987 which started the Safe Motherhood Initiative; but his most noted conference roles were his chairing of the Main Committee of the International Conference on Population in Mexico in 1984, and of the Preparatory Committees and the Main Committee of the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD), Cairo 1994.
Professor Sai continues as a major advocate of women’s development programmes and the human right to family planning and reproductive choice; he supports vigorously the need to demystify contraceptive services through simple client oriented delivery systems. He has written extensively on family planning health and nutrition issues in Africa and has received many international and regional honours and awards for his work in food and nutrition population and family planning, among them a D. Lit. from Tufts University, Boston, Mass. And a D. Sc. From the University of Ghana at Accra, Ghana. He was the 1993 recepient of the UN Population award.