Goodbye, Zafrullah Chowdhury!

Gonoshasthaya Kendra founder and freedom fighter, Dr Zafrullah Chowdhury, is no more. He breathed his last on Tuesday at the age of 81. He was a well-known physician and public health activist. When the liberation war of Bangladesh broke out in1971, he was in the UK for his post-graduate studies in medicine. Returning in India, he with his colleagues set up a 480-bed field hospital in Agartala to treat those wounded during the war. He also took guerrilla training and had been a valiant freedom fighter. In 1972, he founded Gonoshasthaya Kendra with the aim of providing healthcare services to underserved communities in Bangladesh. This is why he is still fondly called the people's doctor. Half of the workers of Gonoshasthaya Kendra are women as part of the organisation's efforts to ensure women's empowerment.

Zafrullah Chowdhury won the Independence Award in 1977 and the Ramon Magsaysay Award, known as the Nobel award of Asia, in 1985. He was also the architect of the country's first national drug policy, adopted in 1982, that played a crucial role in Bangladesh's success in the public health sector. According to the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation, his engineering of Bangladesh's new drug policy eliminated unnecessary pharmaceuticals and made comprehensive medical care more available to ordinary citizens.

Zafrullah Chowdhury is no more with us physically. But he will surely continue to be remembered for his works, especially for his contribution to the country's health sector.

Abu Elias Linkon,

Banasree, Dhaka,

lightening_sparkle@yahoo.com