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’s emancipation. Since 1995 it has expanded to urban Bangladesh, particularly Dhaka.
Zafrullah was also a leading force behind the development of his country’s 1982 Drugs (Control) Ordinance law, which helped Bangladesh control the cost and supply of essential medications. Zafrullah worked with GK until he died.
However, he was not purely focused on making change in his homeland; he was also engaged internationally, including as one of the people behind the creation in 2000 of the People’s Health Movement, a global network that brings together grassroots health activists, civil society organisations and academic institutions.
Zafrullah received widespread recognition, including the Ramon Magsaysay award in 1985 and the Right Livelihood award in 1992. In 2009, he was made a doctor of humanitarian services by the World Organization of Natural Medicine.
Born in Quepara, a village then in East Bengal that is now part of Raozan upazila in the Chattogram district, Zafrullah was the eldest of 10 children. When his father, Humayan Chowdhury, became the officer in charge of Kotwali police station in Calcutta (now Kolkata) and then Bakshibazar in Dhaka, the family moved with him. His mother, Hashina Begum, was a housewife. Zafrullah passed matriculation from Nabakumar school in Bakshibazar, Dhaka.
In 1992, Zafrullah married Shireen Huq, then head of Naripokkho, a leading women’s rights organisation, whom he met through his work.
He is survived by Shireen and their son, Bareesh; by a daughter, Bristi, from his first marriage; and by four sisters and four brothers.
