Zafrullah Chowdhury: surgeon, freedom fighter, and innovator in rural healthcare in Bangladesh

bmj;381/apr27_6/p921/FAF1faHe was nearly kicked out of medical school, but Zafrullah Chowdhury, a vascular surgeon, went on to co-found Bangladesh’s first hospital, train paramedics in a pioneering programme that became the backbone of rural healthcare, and reform the country’s anarchic pharmaceutical policy—resulting in the ban of around 1700 drugs.Chowdhury freely admitted that his “mischief” as general secretary of the Dhaka Medical College students’ union, was “nothing short of alarming.” Describing himself as part of “a highly charged political pressure cooker,” he ran a press conference to “expose corruption” at the hospital.Liberation warThere were more fireworks to come. When the Bangladesh liberation war broke out in March 1971, he and a colleague, M A Robin, burnt their Pakistani passports at Hyde Park in London in a protest against the country.They then flew to Delhi with Indian travel permits—weeks before they were to sit exams for the Royal College of Surgeons. The plane…
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