May 14, 2004 - Fahima Osman - a podcast by Stephen Hammond

Fahima Osman becomes first Somali doctor trained in Canada.Fahima Osman was born in 1978, one of nine children born to Somalians Adam and Zahra Osman. She was 11 when her family, like thousands of other Somalis who fled their country at the time, claimed refugee status in Canada. Even before she’d arrived, Osman had decided she wanted to become a doctor. She shrugged off the fact that there were no Somali doctors in Toronto, and that the city offered no support to, and had very low expectations of, African students. Osman studied tirelessly, her motivation increasing after she spent a summer volunteering for aid agencies in Somalia, where she witnessed the impoverishment she’d escaped. In 2000, her hard work paid off; she was accepted to McMaster’s medical school in Hamilton. She graduated on May 15, 2004, becoming the first Somalia doctor trained in Canada as she took her Hippocratic Oath. Osman then turned her attention to Toronto’s Somali community, which by then numbered in the tens of thousands. Her understanding of her people’s language, religion and experience went far in her efforts to serve them.

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