Dr. Usim Odim, noted physician, dies at 72

Jet, Jan 29, 1996

Dr. Usim Odim, a Nigerian-born psychiatrist who worked as a physician to save civilian victims of the Nigerian Civil War in the late 1960s, recently died of cancer at his Squirrel Hill home in Pittsburgh. He was 72.

Dr. Odim, who helped the Biafran cause and almost single-handedly managed a hospital when most of the medical staff and foreign missionaries fled during the three-year Nigerian Civil War, decided to go back to school and study psychiatry after saving thousands of lives and seeing so much bloodshed. He trained in psychiatry at Norwich State Hospital in Connecticut.

The son of a tribal chief in rural Nigeria, Dr. Odim was once director of the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Treatment Program at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and also a former director of psychiatry at Warren State Hospital. Dr. Odim retired from a private practice in 1994.

He is survived by his wife, Emma Cheek Odim, two daughters, five sons, thirteen grandchildren and a sister.