Urologist by profession and humane by heart, Dr. Adeeb Hassan Rizvi is a well-known name excelling in his profession.
Adib Rizvi, born in 1938 chose to be a doctor and completed his MBBS degree from DOW Medical University, Karachi. Soon after completing his studies, he went to UK to pursue his fellowship in surgery and then spent a decade there working in hospitals.
With a rich experience he returned to his homeland, in 1970’s and brought with himself an idea of provision of free health care to people, inspired by the UK’s health system.
When doctors of his generation returned with money from foreign countries, he came back with a humanitarian idea of serving his people.
According to him, in his early years of life in Pakistan, he saw people being abused for not being able to pay for treatment. He said watching elderly women taking off their earrings and pawning them to pay for medicine was a painful scene. People begged for healthcare, but they would be demeaned. It was like people were required to pawn off their self-respect to get a service, which he felt should have been their right as citizens in the first place.
The doctor describes his journey to the Sindh Institute of Urology as full of obstacles and discouragement.
Determined to pursue transplant surgery, Dr. Rizvi went back to Britain and then on to the US to brush up on the latest technology and practices. After returning home in the early 1980s, Dr. Rizvi started developing a team of doctors, nurses, technicians and other, staff to train them for transplant surgeries.
Wasting no time in waiting to get help from State and the government, he relied on his close circles. His dedication soon motivated people to donate generously for his noble cause. Contributions were collected from a close network of friends and well-wishers. A team of publically-spirited doctors and medics started to come together. They got on with whatever they could manage to expand their services. A few second-hand dialysis machines were imported from Britain and added to the small urology ward.
Starting with just eight-bed ward 40 years ago, the hospital is now a double-storey building with 800 beds. SIUT, to date, has nearly conducted 5,000 free organ transplants, in addition to 750 dialysis sessions on a daily basis.