Published: 14 July 2023
Last updated: 5 March 2024
VIC ALHADEFF visits the annual convention of the Ahmadiyya Muslim community and learns about the important work of Australian Muslim doctors for the global poor.
Sixty percent of the population of the Ivory Coast, on the southern tip of West Africa, live in slums, health care is sub-standard and malaria is endemic throughout the year. But the impoverished country will soon acquire a world-class hospital which will include surgical wards, operating theatres, a gynaecology wing and all manner of quality medical care.
It has taken five years to build the hospital, which is due to open next April. The seed funding for its establishment came from 10 Australian doctors, each of whom donated $25,000.
There is only one cardiac ultrasound machine in the entire Solomon Islands, servicing a population of 700,000, while Thailand and Malaysia have 67 cardiac and non-cardiac surgeries between them, also funded by Australian doctors. Teleconference clinics are conducted regularly by the Australian team.
These and other statistics were proffered in a riveting presentation last weekend by Dr Ata Rehman, president of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Medical Association of Australia. His platform: a keynote address at the annual convention of Australia’s Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, which attracted about 3000 participants to Rosehill Gardens.
The Ahmadiyya Muslim Medical Association of Australia comprises a mere 110 doctors – male and female – yet they spread their expertise to such needy nations as Vanuatu, Gambia, Senegal, Thailand, Malaysia, Pakistan, the Solomon Islands and the Ivory Coast, as well as several other struggling centres. And they all do so on a voluntary basis, at no charge to patients.
One of the doctors is Dr Rehman, a Sydney-based echocardiologist who takes his specialist skills to one of those countries every two or three months. Two months ago, he was operating in Malaysia, while 120 cardiac and other patients are booked in to consult with him on his forthcoming trip to Thailand.
“All Ahmadi doctors should sacrifice their time and their skills for the sake of the wider community,” Dr Rehman tells The Jewish Independent. “This is the message from the Caliph (who is based in London and is the current supreme head of the worldwide Ahmadiyya movement). During Covid, for example, we provided thousands of testing kits free of charge across Australia to anyone in need. I am proud to represent Australia in this way all over the world and to belong to a community which is so small, yet voluntarily does so much humanitarian work and at our own cost.”
