National Prof Dr Abdul Malik dies

National Professor Brigadier (retd) Abdul Malik, founder and president of National Heart Foundation of Bangladesh, has passed away at the age of 94 years (Inna lillahi wa inna ilaihi rajiun).

He breathed his last at 9:40am on Tuesday (December 5) while undergoing treatment at the Heart Foundation.

Shahzadi Sultana Doli, assistant director (public relations) at the Heart Foundation, confirmed the death of Brig Malik.

Brig Malik was suffering from age-related ailments. His body has been kept at the Heart Foundation, she said.

Born on December 1, 1929 in a respectable Muslim family in village Paschim Bhag of South Surma in Sylhet, Prof Malik passed MBBS in 1954 from Dhaka Medical College as a regular student. He joined Pakistan Army Medical Corps in June 1955. 

For higher education, the government sent him to the UK in 1963. After passing MRCP in 1964, he received higher training in Cardiology at Hammersmith Hospital, Post Graduate Medical School London and other hospitals in U.K from March 1964 to February 1966.

After returning from UK in March 1966, he set up a Cardiac unit in Military Hospital Rawalpindi, Pakistan (now Armed Forces Institute of Cardiology-AFIC), and trained the nurses and other relevant staff to successfully run this unit. In March 1970 this center performed the first successful open-heart surgery operation in Pakistan. He joined Institute of Post Graduate Medicine and Research, Dhaka (now Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University) in June 1970 and established cardiac unit and worked as Professor of Cardiology till June 1978.

National Professor Malik was the founder director cum professor of the National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases, Dhaka. He worked there from July 1978 to November 1989. In this institute, the first open heart surgery in Bangladesh was done on September 18, 1981. He also established the National Center for Control of Rheumatic Fever and Heart diseases and worked as a Project Director from 1987 to 1989.

National Professor Brig (Rtd) Malik is the founder president of the National Heart Foundation of Bangladesh, which was formed at his initiative with some medical and non-medical social workers in 1978.