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Salmaan Keshavjee, MD, PhD

About Salmaan Keshavjee, MD, PhD
Salmaan Keshavjee, MD, Ph.D, MA, Sc.M, is the Director of the Program in Infectious Disease and Social Change at the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine (DGHSM) at Harvard Medical School. Trained as a physician and social anthropologist, Dr. Keshavjee is an Assistant Professor of Medicine and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School and in the Division of Global Health Equity at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He is also an attending in Internal Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Dr. Keshavjee completed his thesis work in Harvard’s Department of Anthropology and Center for Middle Eastern Studies on health policies in post-Soviet Tajikistan. Dr. Keshavjee’s clinical research has focused on the implementation of drug-resistant tuberculosis treatment projects run by Partners In Health, and associated treatment outcomes. He has worked extensively with PIH’s drug-resistant tuberculosis program in Russia since 2000. From 2006 to 2008, he was Deputy Country Director for the PIH Lesotho Initiative, launching one of the first community-based treatment programs for multi-drug resistant tuberculosis/HIV co-infection in sub-Saharan Africa. Since 2007 he has led PIH’s Russia research initiative, coordinating a multi-disciplinary team studying treatment outcomes in drug-resistant tuberculosis. This work is informing efforts to treat drug-resistant tuberculosis in the region, including Central Asia, and has resulted in several manuscripts of global clinical and policy significance. Starting in 2005, Dr. Keshavjee has represented PIH/Harvard on the Green Light Committee (GLC) for multi-drug resistant tuberculosis, the principal global mechanism for MDR-TB treatment expansion, housed at the Stop TB Partnership and the World Health Organization. From 2007 until September, 2010, he served as the Committee’s Chair. Through his roles at Harvard, PIH and the GLC, he has advised numerous national programs on the clinical and programmatic management of MDR-TB.
(Source: http://www.brighamandwomens.org/socialmedicine/keshavjeebio.aspx)

Role(s) / Profession(s)

Academic
Director (Site, Program, Project)
Physician
Researcher

Organization

Brigham and Women's Hospital, Division of Global Health Equity
Website: http://www.brighamandwomens.org/socialmedicine/ Type: Medical Institution Country: United States About: The Division of Global Health Equity (DGHE) is dedicated to addressing health disparities through training, education, research and service. The Division focuses on infectious diseases (e.g., HIV and tuberculosis) as well as non-infectious diseases (e.g., coronary artery disease and diabetes) and other health problems of major importance across the globe. Through the hospital’s Doris and Howard Hiatt Residency in Global Health Equity, internal medicine residents in training divide their time between BWH and Partners In Health project sites. This model is now being replicated at other medical schools and teaching hospitals across the country.
Harvard Medical School, Department of Global Health and Social Medicine
Website: http://www.hms.harvard.edu/dsm/ Type: Academic Institution Country: United States About: DGHSM is an interdisciplinary basic science department focused on both teaching and conducting research about the social, cultural and moral aspects of illness and health care, with a special emphasis on reducing health disparities and improving the quality of medical care. Central to the mission of the Department is an effort to address significant global health problems affecting resource-poor societies and underserved American communities. Members of the Department develop innovative interventions for dealing with multi-drug resistant tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS, mental illnesses, and drug abuse in resource poor settings.
Partners In Health - PIH
Website: http://www.pih.org/ Type: Non-Governmental Organization Country: United States About: Partners In Health, co-founded by physicians Paul Farmer and Jim Yong Kim, serves millions of poor patients in nine countries, providing them with extensive health care and social services that address the root causes of poor health. By successfully proving that providing comprehensive, community-based medical care for complex diseases such as AIDS and tuberculosis is not just possible but essential, the organization has helped bring about significant changes in global health policies and practices.

Work Location(s)

Russian Federation
United States

Salmaan's Communities

Language(s)

English

Recent Contributions

Salmaan Keshavjee, MD, PhD started a discussion "3rd Stop TB Partners’ Forum Announced: March 23-25, 2009" in the MDR-TB Treatment & Prevention community.

The Stop TB Partnership Secretariat announced that the third Partner's Forum will take place in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, March 23-25, 2009. The Forum serves as a vehicle for bringing partners together to renew their commitment and intensify their efforts to reach the targets set out in the Global Plan to Stop TB 2006-2015. What is the Stop TB Partners' Forum: The Partners' Forum is the General Assembly of the Stop TB Partnership and the ...
Salmaan Keshavjee, MD, PhD replied to "Question about treatment outcome" in the MDR-TB Treatment & Prevention community.

Dear Mamel, I tend to agree with Einar on this. The clinical question and the reporting question are different. Clinically, it sounds like he should not do another whole treatment. Personally, I would do 6 to 10 more months and ensure that he remains negative the whole time. This way, he'll have a total of 20 to 24 months of total treatment (with the gap of 2 months). As for his outcome, unfortunately for paper-work ...
Salmaan Keshavjee, MD, PhD replied to "Question about Sparflox" in the MDR-TB Treatment & Prevention community.

Hi Askar, Sparfloxacin was removed from the U.S. market because of QT-interval prolongation and increased risk of heart arrhythmias. So, I think it's not a good idea to use it if you have another choice. If using moxifloxacin is a problem, you might consider using high-dose levoquin (750 mg for people weighing less than 50 kg; 1000 mg for people weighing more than 50 kg). This is the dosing that the Iseman's group in Denver ...
Salmaan Keshavjee, MD, PhD replied to "Question about treatment outcome" in the MDR-TB Treatment & Prevention community.

I know it's frustrating Mamel, but unfortunately, these things happen. We can be happy as clinicians knowing in our hearts that the pt is cured, but unfortunately it doesn't make sense to deviate from the standardized reporting. We have this argument frequently in Russia, but have stuck by the WHO reporting.
Salmaan Keshavjee, MD, PhD replied to "Universal Access to Diagnosis and Treatment of MDR-TB" in the MDR-TB Treatment & Prevention community.

Dear Masoud, All, Indeed, achieving universal access to diagnosis and treatment of MDR-TB is critical, and for that we need to scale-up access to quality diagnosis and treatment of MDR. From our combined experiences, Paul Farmer and I recently made the case for this in the NEJM, “Picking Up the Pace – Scale-up of MDR Tuberculosis Treatment Programs” (full text here: http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1010023). In this piece, we estimated that treatment of MDR-TB has been abysmal – ...

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