Salmaan Keshavjee  has been central to the 2006 launch of the Lesotho HIV/AIDS treatment project, whose lead sponsors include Brigham and Women’s and Partners In Health. Dr. Keshavjee’s background in the treatment of multi-drug resistant tuberculosis (MDR TB) has been particularly critical to the effort. Lesotho has the fourth highest incidence of TB in the world, and recent studies have shown that more than 90% of TB patients are also infected with HIV. Of particular concern are high rates of patients with MDR TB. Dr. Keshavjee lead development of a major new program to treat patients co-infected with HIV and MDR TB, which is aimed not only at dramatically improving care throughout Lesotho, but also at extending this coordinated treatment model to co-infected patients throughout sub-Saharan Africa and other regions with high prevalence rates. Dr. Keshavjee has also been instrumental in the launch of a new initiative in Russia to bring community health workers to MDR TB treatment there. This model, developed by Partners In Health in Haiti, has never before been used in Russia and is expected to significantly improve results for some of PIH’s sickest and hardest to reach MDR TB patients there.

Dr. Keshavjee received his PhD in Anthropology and Middle Eastern Studies from Harvard in 1998 and his MD from Stanford in 2001. He completed his research-science residency in Internal Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in 2005. In addition to his appointment with the Division, Dr. Keshavjee serves on the faculty of the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School and the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University.