Fikirte Girma

Biography

I am a young Ethiopian psychiatrist from Ethiopia. I am currently working for Addis Ababa University, Department of Psychiatry and I am involved in teaching both undergraduate and post graduate students in general psychiatry. I am also working in Yekatit 12 Hospital, psychiatry unit. It is one of the two child and adolescent psychiatry units in the country. I am running the clinic, doing clinical work and teaching. My involvement at Yekatit 12 hospital gave me a good opportunity to work with children who have developmental problems, including Autism and their parents. I am currently involved in the ASTA project (The development of a culturally appropriate Autism Screening Tool for Africa) as a co-investigator. I am interested in doing community works as well and has done mhGAP trainings for primary health workers in southern Ethiopia as part of PRIME and AFFIRM projects (for scaling up mental health care in primary health care settings). I am very much interested to do research in the mental health field especially those involving children and women, and for that I have joined the two year MPhill program in public mental health at University of Cape town starting from January 2015.