Malaysian doctor among 17 global citizens selected as UN Young Leaders

Malaysia’s talents continue to make debut in the international ‘hall of fame’ after Mohd Lutfi Fadil Lokman was selected by the United Nations to join 16 others as the UN Young Leaders for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The 29-year-old medical doctor from Gombak, Selangor was selected from among 18,000 nominations from 186 countries based on the work of his initiative, Hospitals Beyond Boundaries (HBB) and after a thorough evaluation by a high level selection committee, comprising representatives from governments, the UN, civil society and the private sector.

"I feel very lucky and proud of this selection and I am still shocked by this honour when they informed me (about the selection) a month ago. But I am aware at the same time that being selected by the UN also means greater responsibility for me to deliver the 17 SDGs.

"I am looking forward to work together with government ministries and agencies, UN bodies and other non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to ensure all these ambitious SDGs are achievable," he said when contacted by Bernama after the unveiling ceremony at the Social Good Summit 2016 in New York, Monday night.

Held annually during the UN General Assembly (UNGA) week, the summit is a two-day conference aimed to examine the impact of technology and new media on social good initiatives around the world.

On January 1 this year the 17 SDGs of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted by world leaders in September 2015 at an historic UN Summit, officially came into force.

Sharing his dream to establish a voluntary association that focuses on creating a sustainable healthcare system in a community, the newly wed Mohd Lutfi Fadil said he has always been inspired with the humanitarian works of Mercy Malaysia, Doctors Without Borders and other NGOs.

"It all started when I was a fourth year medical student at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia during which, I was hospitalised because of a bad head injury. Brain fluid leaked out from one of my ears and my ear drum was damaged, affecting my balance and ability to walk.

"I vowed that if God ever get me out of that condition, I will pursue my dream and passion of helping communities to build a sustainable healthcare system," he said, adding that he was so happy that his prayer was answered and in 2012, HBB was born and co-founded by his friend, Dr Wan Abdul Hannan.

According to him, a lot of NGOs were working within the healthcare and humanitarian sector but were mostly not sustainable.

Hence the idea of HBB is to build clinics and hospitals that are able to sustain and empower the community in that area to embark on social enterprise work.

Noting that the HBB was a youth organisation, the inspired doctor said the work of the voluntary organisation started off by delivering medical services and providing advice to rural community through mobile clinics.

"But in June 2015, we have established a clinic in Cambodia, focusing in helping the Muslim community, the Cham people. We recruited two medical doctors from the Cambodian Health Ministry to work full time with HBB.

"At the same time, using our medical expertise from Malaysia, we train the local community there to work as medical health workers or medical assistants in which their duty is to go into the community and provide medical assistance," he said.

He added that HBB would send a number of medical doctors from Malaysia to Cambodia to organise training for the doctors there, especially on how to use hospital equipment. Besides the two full time doctors, there are also two full time staff nurses and one lab technician running the HBB clinic in Cambodia.

Asked about his upcoming plan, Mohd Lutfi Fadil was excited to share the news about the opening of HBB’s maternity hospital in Cambodia, which is expected to be operational by next January after it was completed in August this year.

"We use the profits generated from the clinic to subsidise treatment for under privileged patients and build more medical facilities, a concept we called ‘cross subsidy’.

"Our aim, again, is to make it locally through the transfer of knowledge between Malaysia and Cambodia,” he said.

According to him, the social economic gap was huge in Cambodia and that could be seen in the availability of hospital equipment or machinery which were only available at main hospitals in the city.

"We work closely with the Cambodian government and the local NGOs there. The (Cambodian) government is very supportive of our mission because the country is very poor and they could not provide healthcare to all communities.

"I love doing it. It makes me and my team appreciate the differences between the two countries and it definitely helps us to gain a broader knowledge in medical and a wider perspective in medicine," he added.

And his parting advice to the Malaysian youth is : "If you have dreams or something burning in your heart, do it while you’re still young. Because the beginning is the hardest. So if you have any dream just do it,". -- BERNAMA