A woman scientistβs long journey from Somalia to WHO
Few scientists, men or women, have overcome the odds Dr Marian Warsame faced as a young girl growing up in Somalia. The eldest of ten children, Marian learned from an early age that to get ahead as a girl, she would have to study hard. And that she did, always excelling in school and finishing at the top of her class.
βI was determined to improve my life,β she says. βAnd my parents always encouraged me. My father was a policeman, and our big family had only his salary, but he and my mother never pressured me to get married; they wanted me to stay in school.β Indeed, while most girls dropped out after the 8th grade, Warsame made her way to Somalia National University, where she studied medicine and surgery, one of just eight women in a class of fifty.
A move to Sweden and malaria studies
After earning her MD, Warsame went on to complete a Master of Medical Sciences at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, and already, the young scientist was making important contributions to the literature. By 1986, she had published the first reports of chloroquine resistant plasmodium falciparum in Somalia and completed the first ever description of malaria endemicity in an area along the Shebelle River in the countryβs south. And thanks to a TDR training grant and support from Swedish Agency for Research and Cooperation, Warsame was able to continue her studies at the Karolinska Institute in pursuit of a PhD.
Warsameβs PhD work focused on the evolution of Somaliaβs drug-resistant falciparum malaria. Over the course of her PhD programme, civil war erupted in Somalia, forcing her to remain in Sweden to complete her degree. Later, she embarked on a post-doctoral research project with support from the Swedish government.
Community case management that helped children
Indeed, that experience made Warsame an ideal candidate for a position as principal investigator on two TDR-supported trials in the country. βWhen I started my PhD, I was doing laboratory work and individual-level clinical work,β she says. βAs a post-doc, I expanded to malaria case management at the health facility level. And when I received the TDR research grant to be the PI on studies in Tanzania, the focus of my research shifted from health care delivery to community-based care. So that project both built on my previous work and allowed me to develop new skills.β
Warsame spent most of the next eight years in Tanzania. The first trial, which assessed the impact of early administration of rectal artesunate on childhood severe malaria in rural Tanzania, resulted in a
paper published in the Lancet, and seeing it in print, says Marian, was a proud moment.
