Prof. Fazal Elahi was Prof of Surgery and Head of Department Of Surgery at Dow & CHK. We honoured his memory, with a plenary lecture dedicated to him in Surgicon 2013 conference, organized by the Society of Surgeons Pakistan, Karachi Chapter, in December 2013. Dr. Rizwan Azami, Vice President, College of Physician Surgeon Pakistan, wrote and delivered the citation for Prof. Fazal Elahi on the occasion.
Dr. Zakiuddin G. Oonwala,
Class of 1966
Fazal Elahi
It is a pleasure and honor to read this citation in honor of Dr. Fazal Elahi in whose memory this morning’s session is dedicated.
There may be many in the audience today who would be wondering who he was and why he is being remembered today. For many who have had the good fortune to have known of him or worked with him it would not be amiss if the entire program was dedicated to his memory.
I will try and paint a picture of the man I knew and thought he was.
I first knew him as a Professor of Surgery when I was in the final years of my medical College days in the early 1970s. This was in Dow Medical College and Civil Hospital, Karachi.
At this time, others and I as students were in awe of his amazing ability to explain issues in surgery. I remember that he had this peculiar gift of neatly and seamlessly tying up anatomy, physiology, pathology and surgery. He did this with such facility and simplicity that one was left feeling sorry when the class ended. The mystery of how he did this and the wonder at this ability of his stayed with us for a long time.
He was born on 5th January 1925 in the small town of Rai Baraily in Uttar Pradesh.
Professor Fazal Elahi graduated from King George Medical College, Lucknow in 1947 and immigrated to Pakistan 1948. Almost immediately he began his academic career as a Lecturer in pathology at Dow Medical College where he stayed till 1950 and his departure to England where he qualified the DTMH and FRCS in the mid 1950s. On return from England he served as an Assistant Professor in Unit 1 with Professor M.A.H. Siddiqui. In the Mid 1960s he was promoted to Professor and took charge of Surgical Unit 2. In the mid 1970s he became the head of the Surgery Department following the retirement of Prof. S.A.H. Rizvi and held this post till 1985 when he retired.
In the mid 70’s he began to have a serious interest in postgraduate education when the College sent him and Professor M.M. Hasan to Dundee University for a course in Medical Education, the next year 1975 saw him visiting the the Department of Medical Education at the University of Illinois. While his interest in postgraduate medical education was being formally nurtured, the College asked him to head the Teacher Training Center that was set up with the collaboration of the WHO in 1979. This was to later evolve into the Department of Medical Education.
He was to need the distraction that the Teacher Training Center provided very sorely in the latter half of the 1980s when he had retired and lost his youngest son in a car accident.
In those days the name of most surgeons was associated with the image of a willful, robust, rugged, gregarious and garrulous individual who had scant patience and tolerance for the world at large. In those days most surgeons were expected to be technically superb and not expected by their colleagues or the community to have any other quality about them. In this respect Dr. Fazal Elahi was an oddity. He was a good surgeon and in stark contrast to the prevailing stereotype Dr. Fazal Elahi struck a totally different chord. He was quiet, thoughtful, considerate, gentle, precise, articulate and commanding, yet in a soft spoken way. He was able to draw the attention of willful adults and keep them focused on the task in hand. This was a quality that stood him in good stead as a teacher of teachers in the country.
As his Registrar I watched him closely for a decade and I could go on about what he was like, but that would not be fair to you or his memory, he would have wanted any eulogy to be brief and to the point. So I bid you a good morning and pray that the talks in dedication to his memory this morning hold the promise and the pleasure that every contact with him invariably produced.
Dr. Rizwan Azami
Vice President,
College of Physician Surgeon Pakistan
