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Byline: KHALIL AHMED

Indus Hospital and Health Network provides 100% free of cost and high-quality healthcare

Each member of IHHN has the core quality of compassionate care

Interview with Dr. Abdul Bari Khan - the Founding President of Indus Hospital and Health Network

PAGE: Tell me something about yourself, please:

Dr. Abdul Bari Khan: I have had the privilege to have been the CEO of the then Indus Hospital. Now, I am honored to be the Founding President of today's Indus Hospital and Health Network. I was born in Karachi, in a family originally from Peshawar. To my good fortune, I belong to a religious family widely known for their piety, altruism, compassion and generosity towards community and humanity.

I consider myself blessed to have inculcated these values since childhood and have tried my best to live my life promoting and practicing the same. My childhood, college and higher education is from Karachi and since my youth, I have been involved in community service.

I graduated from Dow Medical College, Karachi in 1986 and as a medical student, I was associated with the Patients' Welfare Association (PWA) as a project in charge of the Blood Bank and Blood Fractionation Unit. After completing my MBBS, I was lucky enough to lead the PWA project to establish the New Emergency and Accident Unit of Civil Hospital Karachi through voluntary donations. I completed my fellowship in Cardiac Surgery in 1995 and trained at the National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases (NICVD). After completing my fellowship in 1999, I joined Civil Hospital, Karachi as a Cardiac Surgeon but without a Cardiac Surgery Department.

In around two years, with the help of various donors and philanthropists, we were able to raise PKR 30.5 million which helped establish the Department of Cardiac Surgery at Dow Medical College and Civil Hospital, Karachi. This would not have been possible without the philanthropy Pakistan displayed, and I am proud to have played a role in the Department of Cardiac Surgery which now serves as a model cardiac surgery ward of the country, providing free-of-cost Cardiac Surgery' to non-affording patients.

Apart from my professional responsibilities, I also consider myself a social activist devoted to promoting healthcare facilities and services in the country. I truly believe that private participation in public sector hospitals is the cornerstone to improving the health sector, and I feel lucky to have been given the opportunity to promote...