Background
Ighodaro was born Irene Elizabeth Beatrice Wellesley-Cole in Freetown, Sierra Leone, one of seven children of engineer Wilfred Wellesley-Cole.
judge physician president reformer
Ighodaro was born Irene Elizabeth Beatrice Wellesley-Cole in Freetown, Sierra Leone, one of seven children of engineer Wilfred Wellesley-Cole.
University of Durham.
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. She was notable for being one of the first female physicians in West Africa.
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 through a terminal illness.
She received her Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery from the University of Durham in England. They moved to Nigeria, where he become a judge on the High Court of Midwestern Nigeria.
She consulted the World Health Organization on child and maternal health and authored the book Baby"s First Year.
Ighodaro died on 29 November 1995.
Ighodaro maintained a private medical practice and was a member of a number of western Nigerian medical advisory committees. She also chaired the University of Benin Teaching Hospital"s board of management and was a member of the Young Women’s Christian Association World Executive Committee. She was made a Member of the British Empire (Administration Member of the Order of the British Empire) in 1958.