Currently, he is a Member of the Board of World Diabetes Foundation and Hon. General Secretary of Tanzania Diabetes Association (TDA), Tanzania NCD Alliance (TANCDA) and Chair, Association of Private Health Facilities of Tanzania (APHFTA).
Professor Ramaiya served as Chair of sub-Saharan Africa Region of International Diabetes Federation (IDF) from Year 2000 to 2006 and then as a Vice-President (Global) of IDF from Year 2007 to 2012. During his tenure as the Chair of the sub-Saharan Africa Region, several tools were developed for the region in three major languages: English, French and Portuguese. The tools included “Diabetes Declaration for sub-Saharan Africa Region, Clinical Practice Guidelines for type 2 Diabetes and Diabetes Education Manual for Diabetes Educators in the region. In addition, several training workshops were held related to different subject matters including diabetes foot, diabetes education, management of type 1 diabetes in children and post graduate training for management of type 2 diabetes and its complications (in partnership with EASD/ADA).
Professor Ramaiya did his schooling in Dar es Salaam and then received his basic medical training at the University of Bombay, India (1981) and completed his postgraduate training in Internal Medicine at the University of Dar es Salaam (1986-1989). His post-masters training was in University of Newcastle –Upon-Tyne, UK (1990-1991).
He has been actively involved in research on diabetes for many years and specialised, among other topics, on glucose tolerance and cardiovascular disease risk factors and mainly focused on Indian communities living in Africa.
Professor Ramaiya greatly contributed to a better understanding of diabetes in the African region. His research on the role of ethnic differences is of great value. He has also investigated on the status of diabetes care in Africa, the economic costs of diabetes and its consequences. He has held many oral presentations and published several articles on the above topics.
At present, Professor Ramaiya is working with children who have Type 1 diabetes, gestational diabetes, metabolic syndrome and cardiovascular complications of antiretroviral drugs in HIV/AIDS and Diabetes/TB interaction. Together with NIMRI (Muhimbili) and LSTM, he is working on CD NCD Integration models (MOCCA Study) and will be overseeing metformin intervention in HIV patients with IGT (META Trial). He has also participated actively with other colleagues in TDA, MoHCDGEC and PORALG to implement Diabetes / NCD program in Zonal, Regional and District Hospitals all over the country. This program has now obtained additional funding to expand to encompass NCD prevention & promotion, curative services in primary care, training, policy & legislations, monitoring & evaluation and operational research.