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Published on October 1, 2007
Contact: Julie Monzo
Phone: 800-323-4040, ext. 7538
E-mail: media@cap.org
Toronto Pathologist Awarded Grant for Humanitarian Efforts
Shabin Nanji, MBChB, FCAP, FRCPC, Receives Grant to Provide Cervical Cancer Screening and Treatment Services to Women in Kenya
Northfield, IL.—Shabin Nanji, MBChB, FCAP, FRCPC, of Toronto, Canada, was one of five recipients of the 2007 College of American Pathologists (CAP) Foundation Humanitarian Grant Award recognized at a ceremony held on Sept. 29, 2007, in Chicago at CAP ’07 – The Pathologists’ Meeting™.
The CAP Foundation Humanitarian Grant Award provides grants to members of the College, which are used to fund pathology and medical services to underprivileged patients in an underdeveloped area of the world. This grant will support the collaborative vision of Dr. Nanji to greatly improve the medical care provided to women who reside in the cities of Narok, Tigoni, and Nakuru in Kenya.
This project was developed through Dr. Nanji, who is in the process of creating a formal organization and whose interests in international health and commitment to share resources with the underserved patients come from the values and ethics of her faith. Dr. Nanji, a Shia Ismaili Muslim, said that she considers it her responsibility to help improve the quality of health care for marginalized individuals. She says that Islam, like virtually all other religions, places a great emphasis on caring for the poor and for those in need. Dr. Nanji is committed to helping the families of Kenya by providing ways to screen for cervical cancer, a preventable cancer that claims 2,300 lives per year in Kenya.
This grant will allow Dr. Nanji to enhance the infrastructure of inadequate medical facilities and to begin screening more than 30,000 Kenyan women for cervical cancer. Many die from this preventable cancer each year due to insufficient knowledge and poor equipment available in this developing country. The funds will be used for collection, processing, and reporting of Pap tests, as well as to provide follow-up treatment to the women who have abnormal Pap tests.
“It is a great privilege to accept, on behalf of the Kenyan women, the 2007 CAP Foundation Humanitarian Grant Award,” said Dr. Nanji. “It is my duty and it brings me great joy to help protect the women of my homeland from dying from cervical cancer.”
Dr. Nanji currently serves as a faculty member in the Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology at the University of Toronto in Ontario, Canada, as a staff pathologist in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto and as a Global Health Scholar of the Peter A. Silverman Centre for International Health at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto. She has also served as a clinical instructor at Harvard Medical School in Boston.
Dr. Nanji completed her Bachelor of Science in Immunology at the United Medical and Dental Schools of Guy’s and St. Thomas’ in London, before completing her Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery at University of Cambridge, England. She then moved to Boston to train in Anatomic and Clinical Pathology at Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School.
The College of American Pathologists Foundation promotes science and education in an effort to improve the delivery of pathology services to patients and expand medical research and funding of individual research projects through sponsorship of the Scholars Research Fellowship Program.
The College of American Pathologists is a medical society that serves nearly 16,000 physician members and the laboratory community throughout the world. It is the world’s largest association composed exclusively of pathologists and is widely considered the leader in laboratory quality assurance. The CAP is an advocate for high quality and cost-effective patient care.
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