Version imprimableObituary
Zafrullah Chowdhury obituary
Andy Rutherford
10 July 2023
My friend Zafrullah Chowdhury, who has died aged 81, was a public health activist dedicated to making basic healthcare more accessible in rural Bangladesh. He founded the community-based healthcare organisation Gonoshasthaya Kendra (GK), which provides affordable, high-quality medical services to millions of people.
After studying at Dhaka College, he passed the MBBS with distinction in surgery from Dhaka medical college in 1964. The following year he moved to the UK to continue his medical studies, training as a general and vascular surgeon at the Royal College of Surgeons in London from 1965 to 1971. He passed the primary FRCS exam in 1970, but, weeks before he was due to sit the final exam, he instead decided to return to Bangladesh to set up a field hospital amid the war of liberation against Pakistan in 1971. Zafrullah remained in Bangladesh for the rest of his life.
It was in 1972 that Zafrullah and colleagues founded GK, initially focused on providing comprehensive healthcare in rural areas. GK was the first organisation outside China to provide comprehensive training to paramedics who, vitally, in a male-dominated society, were female, riding bicycles into the countryside. The organisation steadily expanded its scope into education, agriculture, employment generation, production of essential medicines and women
