While working on his undergraduate degree at Duke University, Faraan Rahim had the chance to travel to Ghana in west Africa for a summer project, and the 2019 Franklin Regional graduate fell in love with the challenges and rewards of global health care.

Today, Rahim is on the opposite side of the continent, working in Tanzania with a project focused on cardiovascular health during his third year at Harvard Medical School.

“Duke happened to have a longstanding collaboration with the Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Center, and I started working with an emergency medicine physician there,” he said.

The project’s overall goal is to improve early diagnosis and treatment of heart attacks, in part by decreasing hypertension, or high blood pressure, among Tanzanians.

“Right now we have a trial going with a (group) of HIV patients who also have hypertension,” Rahim said. “We’ll have community health workers who counsel them and provide medications. Day-to-day, I’m shadowing patients who are getting hypertension screening and care.”

HIV is a significant health epidemic in the country, and more than 5% of Tanzanians are currently living with the disease, according to nonprofit UNAIDS. Rahim and others in the project are also interviewing the heads of local HIV clinics and interviewing community health workers to determine if the education and intervention is effective.

“In the current state of the HIV epidemic, with readily available retro-viral treatment even in Tanzania, AIDS-related mortality has decreased a great deal,” Rahim said. “But people with HIV are more susceptible to cardiovascular disease and hypertension.” 

In addition, the country has a general shortage of healthcare providers and physicians, which is why Rahim was happy to have the funds in hand from a recent $10,000 U.S. Department of State grant aimed at helping boost proficiency in medical-related English.

“Students can complete their entire primary schooling using just the Swahili language,” Rahim said. “But for students interested in medicine, the vast majority of medical-school education and materials are in English. So we wanted to bolster their English, specifically in a medical context, to give them the opportunity to consider a healthcare career.”

The grant-funded program is in its fourth week, Rahim said, working with students ages 14-17 alongside three adult Tanzanian English teachers.

“We’ve taught the names for internal organs, how to describe a flu and its symptoms, very medically-focused English,” he said. “We’re really excited about both programs, and we’re looking forward to publishing the data we’re collecting.”