Poojan Shrestha

Nepal

International Health & Tropical Medicine (MSc), 2016
St Hilda's College, Oxford

Funding: Louis Dreyfus

Poojan graduated top of his class in Dental Surgery from the BP Koirala Institute of Health Sciences in Nepal. During his training he experienced first-hand the deprivation of basic healthcare necessities in rural Nepal, thus developing a strong commitment and passion for public health.After graduation he worked as a dentist at Patan Hospital. Besides his daily work, he also volunteered as a cancer advocate organizing programmes at Richa Foundation to raise cancer awareness and prevention.  Poojan was employed at the Oxford University Clinical Research Unit in Nepal where he explored tuberculosis (TB) in healthcare workers. He has sought to understand the applicability of a new Xpert MTB/RIF assay, measured incidence and transmission rates in rural Nepal and has developed his TB research through various collaborations. He has also been involved with projects looking at antibiotic resistance, establishing a drug resistance index and examining trends of resistance, as well as undertaking clinical research on enteric fever.

Having completed the MSc in International Health and Tropical Medicine in 2015-16, Poojan has been working in various capacities as a researcher of infectious diseases and oral health; a cancer advocate; and a clinician and more recently as a candidate for a PhD in Epidemiology.