Azad Moopen

Azad Moopen (born 15 April 1953 in Kalpakancheri, Kerala) is an Indian doctor and philanthropist, and a developer of healthcare facilities in Asia-Pacific. He is the chairman and managing director of Aster DM Healthcare, a healthcare conglomerates in the Middle East and India founded in 1987. In 2010 and 2011, he was awarded the Pravasi Bharatiya Samman and Padma Shri by the Government of India, respectively. Forbes ranked him 6th in the "Top 100 Indian Leaders in UAE" list, and according to Arabian Business named him as 29th in the "50 Richest Indians in the GCC". His total wealth was estimated at approximately $5.9 billion by Forbes in 2017.

Early life and education 

Azad Moopen was born in 1953 in the Indian village Kalpakancheri in Malappuram district of Kerala. His family owned land in the area of Kalpakancheri, a part of Valluvanad in Southern Malabar.

Azad Moopen passed the MBBS with a gold medal and an MD in general medicine  from the Calicut Medical College, Kerala, and a diploma in chest disease from Delhi University.

Career 
In 1982, Moopen started his career at the Calicut Medical College, where he served as a medical lecturer for five years before moving to Dubai in 1987. There he started a single doctor practice at his own clinic. He established a chain of healthcare facilities in West Asia with 175 unit hospitals, poly clinics, pharmacies and diagnostic centres in UAE, Qatar, Oman and Saudi Arabia. His firm, Aster DM Healthcare, employs about 10,000 people in the Middle East, and serves more than 7 million patients a year.

Healthcare development in India 
Moopen has been involved in the development of healthcare facilities in India. MIMS hospitals directly employ about 3,000 people.

He participated in establishing the 600-bed tertiary care Malabar Institute of Medical Sciences (MIMS) hospital at Kozhikode in Kerala in 2001. This was the first multi-specialty hospital in India to receive National Accreditation Board for Hospitals & Healthcare Providers accreditation in 2007. The second 150-bed MIMS hospital was set up at Kottakkal in Malappuram district in 2009.

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 three wards around MIMS in the Corporation of Kozhikode and also plans to conduct a breast and cervical cancer screening programme.

Other activities 

He was the Gulf Area convener of the Malabar Airport Development Action Committee, which spearheaded the efforts for the establishment of Kozhikode International Airport through a public–private partnership initiative in the 1990s. This is the first airport set up with such private participation in the country. He is the founding chairman of the Association of Kerala Medical Graduates and the Association of Indian Muslims in the UAE. He is also one of the promoters of Credence High School, Dubai, a secondary school he co-founded along with others in 2014.

Moopen is vice chairman of the Social Advancement Foundation of India. The 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.

Philanthropy 
Moopen set up a foundation for upgrading and extending healthcare charitable benefits to the downtrodden in wider geographies. The foundation focuses on healthcare, educational and social philanthropies through "Healing Touch" activities. 

He gave 20% of his wealth (about Rs.1 billion) to philanthropic activities for support of social changes.

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, set up a 32-acre campus at Karad in Malappuram district which has more than 1,100 students in medical and nursing subjects.

Moopen initiated innovative corporate social responsibility programmes. Some of the ongoing non-profit activities of the foundation are the establishment of stand-alone community dialysis centres, early disease detection and cancer screening centres, radiation oncology centres, free paediatric and adult cardiac surgery programmes, subsidies for advanced surgical treatments for underprivileged people, village adoptions and local empowerment programme for women and children, and various health and safety awareness campaigns, across Gulf countries, India, Africa, Afghanistan and Philippines, either directly and through supporting NGOs. He is also actively involved in setting up educational establishments in Saudi Arabia, India and the UAE in moulding future generations. On 14 July 2015, Aster DM Healthcare, chaired by Moopen, made a donation of  2.72 million to Al Jalila Foundation, a UAE based charitable organization promoting medical education and research.

Awards and recognitions 

 Padma Shri Award by the Government of India (2011)
 Pravasi Bharatiya Samman by the Government of India (2010)
 Arab Health Award for "Outstanding Contribution of an Individual to the Middle East Healthcare Industry" (2010)
 Best Doctor Award by the Government of Kerala (2009)
 Dubai Service Excellence Award (2004) by the Government of Dubai, United Arab Emirates for the Group
 Kerala Ratna Award by Keraleeyam presented by Shri K G Balakrishnan, Hon. Chief Justice of India, in New Delhi (2008) (Section - Reports 2008-2009)
 Aslam Kshema Award by Kshema Foundation for outstanding effort to help economically deprived people (2009)
Lifetime Achievement Award by FICCI Healthcare Excellence Awards (2018)

See also
Dr. Moopens Academy

References

External links
 Aster DM Healthcare official website
 

Category:Living people
Category:20th-century Indian medical doctors
Category:Recipients of the Padma Shri in social work
Category:Recipients of Pravasi Bharatiya Samman
Category:1953 births
Category:Indian expatriates in the United Arab Emirates
Category:People from Malappuram district
Category:Kerala diaspora
Category:Recipients of Indian civil awards and decorations from UAE