Irene Ighodaro

Irene Elizabeth Beatrice Ighodaro née Wellesley-Cole (16 May 1916 – 29 November 1995) was a Sierra Leone Creole physician and social reformer who was the first Sierra Leonean woman to qualify as a medical doctor and the first West African-born female doctor in Britain. She was president of the Young Women's Christian Association of Nigeria. She was also the first President of the Medical Association of Nigerian Women.

Life Ighodaro was born Irene Elizabeth Beatrice Wellesley-Cole in Freetown, Sierra Leone, one of seven children of civil engineer, Wilfred Wellesley-Cole who was the superintendent of Freetown waterworks. Her elder brother was physician Robert Wellesley-Cole. She attended the Government Model School and graduated from the Annie Walsh Memorial School. She decided to become a physician after nursing her mother, Elizabeth Cole (née Okrafo-Smart), through a terminal illness. She attended Newcastle-upon-Tyne Medical School She was one of three women in her medical school class of sixty students. From January 1945 to September 1946, she managed her brother’s private practice while he was on a work assignment with the Colonial Office in West Africa. with whom she had four children; Tony, Wilfred, Ayo, and Yinka.

After their wedding, she and her husband relocated to East Croydon and resided at the International Language Club.

Ighodaro maintained a private medical practice and was a member of a number of western Nigerian medical advisory committees. She consulted the World Health Organization on child and maternal health and authored the book Baby's First Year. She also helped set up the University of Benin Teaching Hospital, modelling it after the Royal Victoria Infirmary and was the first chair of its board of management and was a member of the YWCA World Executive Committee. In 2024, a public mural was unveiled of Irene Ighodaro at Guy's Hospital in London. In June 2025, a blue plaque in honour of Irene Ighodaro was unveiled at a student residence, Jesmond View in Newcastle.