Monday, August 2, 2021

Neonatologist Kelechi Ikeri joins pediatrics faculty

USA Health Children’s & Women’s Hospital is expanding its interdisciplinary team of pediatric physicians with the addition of Kelechi Ikeri, MBBS, FAAP, a neonatologist who joins the region’s only level lll neonatal intensive care unit to care for extremely premature infants.

“I love taking care of newborns,” Ikeri said. “Neonatology gives me an opportunity to go into the physiology and reasons behind the illnesses that children can face.”

Ikeri, an assistant professor of pediatrics at the USA College of Medicine, said he was drawn to USA Health because of the patient population’s wide range of complexity and cases: “They afford you the opportunity to progress in your career in terms of clinical experience and quality improvement.”

Ikeri was born in Nigeria and earned a bachelor of medicine and surgery degree from the University of Lagos College of Medicine in Idi-Araba, in Lagos, Nigeria. An interest in critical care medicine, he said, attracted him to neonatology. 

He worked in hospitals in Nigeria and the island of Tobago before moving to the United States in 2015. Ikeri completed a pediatric residency at Woodhull Medical and Mental Health Centre in Brooklyn, New York in 2018 and completed a neonatal-perinatal medicine fellowship at St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children in Philadelphia, Pa., in June 2021.  

He is certified in general pediatrics by the American Board of Pediatrics, and is a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics, American Medical Association and American College of Medical Quality.