AfOx Fellow
2022
Senior Lecturer
Department of Obstetrics & Gynaecology, University of Ghana Medical School
Univeristy of Ghana
Ghana

Research Interests

  • High risk pregnancies
  • Pregnancies with Sickle Cell Disease
  • Stillbirths / Perinatal mortality
  • Prenatal diagnosis / Congenital anomalies

Dr Alim Swarray Deen

Dr Alim Swarray Dean is a clinical investigator and a high-risk obstetrician. He is currently a Visiting Fellow at the Nuffield Department Of Women’s & Reproductive Health and the Department of Computer Science, University of Oxford, as part of the Africa Oxford Visiting Fellowship Programme.  

Alim undertook his medical training  in Sierra  Leone and his membership and fellowship training in Ghana. He is currently a senior lecturer at the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, University of Ghana Medical School. Besides his academic work, Alim has worked as a Consultant Obstetrician Gynaecologist at Nyaho Medical Centre and Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital in Accra, Ghana. 

Alim’s research focuses on predicting babies at risk of adverse outcomes either late in pregnancy, during labour or after birth. His research has the potential to be hugely significant and could lead to dramatically reduced perinatal mortality rates in low-resource settings. He uses ultrasonography, placenta biomarkers and fetal growth whilst in-utero to attempt to predict babies at risk of adverse outcomes. His recent research has focused on the Feasibility Of Pulmonary Hypertension Screening Referral System In Pregnant Sickle Cell Disease Women with the Stroke and Cardiovascular Research Training (SCaRT) Institute.  

While at the University of Oxford,  Alim will be working on the project ‘Fetal Neurosonography And Neurodevelopmental Outcomes In Pregnant Women With Sickle Cell Disease (SCD)’. This project will explore the pattern of fetal brain development in pregnancies complicated by SCD at a teaching hospital in Accra. Ghana is one of the most Sickle Cell Disease (SCD)-burdened countries, with 15,000 new-borns with SCD delivered each year. With improvements in healthcare, girls with SCD are now surviving into their childbearing years, and their pregnancies are complicated by fetal growth restriction and preterm birth. The adverse outcomes for these low birth weight babies include high perinatal mortality, birth asphyxia and long-term complications such as behavioural and learning difficulties. This project will use both 2D neurosonography and a brain-age prediction algorithm, developed by the Oxford Machine Learning in Neuroimaging laboratory to evaluate the cortical development and the corpus callosum to detect those small fetuses with impaired brain maturation who might benefit from early intervention.