Dr. Azad Moopen, an Indian physician, is a developer of healthcare facilities in Dubai. He has been awarded the Padma Shri by the Government of India in 2011.[1]
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He belongs to the Moopen family of Kalpakancheri in Malappuram district of Kerala, who owned a bulk of land in the area. His father, Ahmed Unni Moopen, was actively involved in the freedom struggle during the 1940s. Moopen passed the MBBS with gold medal and MD in General Medicine from the Calicut Medical College, Kerala, and Diploma in Chest Disease from Delhi University. He served as a Lecturer there for five years before relocating to Dubai in 1987.
Starting a single doctor practice at his own clinic, he established over 20 years a chain of healthcare facilities in West Asia with 90 units - hospitals, poly clinics, pharmacies and diagnostic centres in UAE, Qatar, Oman and Saudi Arabia His firm, DM Healthcare employs about 2,000 people in the Gulf, and serves more than 3 million patients a year. it has an annual turnover of more than Rs 700 crore under the corporate brand ‘ASTER’.[2]
He has been actively involved in the development of heathcare facilities in India.[3] MIMS Hospitals employ about 3,000 people directly.
He participated in establishing the 600-bed tertiary care Malabar Institute of Medical Sciences (MIMS) hospital[4] at Kozhikode in Kerala in 2001 This the first multispecialty hospital in India to receive the NABH) accreditation in 2007. The second 150-bed MIMS Hospital set up at Kottakkal in Malappuram district in 2009.
His group is setting up a Medical College at Wayanad, a MIMS Curie Cancer Centre at Kozhikode, and Community Dialysis Centres, in Kerala. They have embarked on a project to establish the DM MedCity at Kochi.
The Group conducts regular free medical camps for the labour in different GCC countries. He started the ‘Save the Little Heart’ programme in Dubai in March 2009 to spread awareness and raise about Rs 65 lakh for doing cardiac surgery for 60 children from the economically weaker section.
MIMS Charitable Trust under his leadership established a Rural Health Centre at the backward Vazhayur Panchayat near Kozhikode in 2008 and adopted 7,000 BPL members for comprehensive free Out-patient and In-Patient care. The Trust is adopting the BPL population in the 3 Wards around MIMS in the Corporation of Calicut and also plans to conduct a breast and cervical cancer screening program.
Naseera & Moopen Foundation, his family Trust is setting up the Human Resource Management Centre in his native village of Kalpakancheri to address the educational backwardness through intervention among school children and by parental counselling and training.
The MIMS Academy Trust, under his Chairmanship has set up a 32-acre campus at Karad in Malappuram District which has more than 1,100 students in medical and nursing subjects.[5]
He was the Gulf Area Convener of the Malabar Airport Development Action Committee (MADAC), which spearheaded the efforts for the establishment of Kozhikode International Airport through a PPP initiative in the 90s. Kozhikode International Airport is the first airport set up with such private participation in the country. He is the Founder Chairman of Muslim Educational Society (MES), Association of Kerala Medical Graduates (AKMG)(www.akmgemirates.org) and Association of Indian Muslims (AIM) in the UAE.
He is also the executive trustee of the Global Educational Trust which is building the Horizon International School near Kozhikode at a cost of Rs.15 crore for providing international quality education to the children. He is also the Vice Chairman of 3 International Schools with CBSC syllabus in Riyadh, Jeddah and Dammam in Saudi Arabia.
Moopen is Vice Chairman of the Social Advancement Foundation of India (SAFI) www.safiindia.org. This non-profit organization is in the process of establishing a Deemed University on 350 acres in Malabar to provide access to the students from the backward communities to frontier areas of Technology, Science and Management.