Prof Syed Saeed Ashraf SMC’81 was recently bestowed the title of OBE by King Charles at Buckingham Palace. He is a renowned Cardiothoracic Surgeon at Swansea University Teaching Hospital in Wales, UK and a Professor at Swansea University. He began his journey of serving humanity through student activism in his SMC days.

These days, he is dedicated to improving clinical services in his speciality in Pakistan. He spends his summer in Pakistan operating on patients at NICVD. He has utilised his annual leave for the past few years, working seven days a week for six weeks at the National Institute of Cardiovascular Disease (NICVD) in Karachi.

He operates six days each week, mostly on young people, in their 20s and 30s, with rheumatic valvular diseases – heart conditions now comparatively rare in the West. Then, every Sunday, he would teach and train young local and Afghan cardiac surgeons new techniques which they would put into practice under his supervision the following week.
He is also trying to introduce strict quality improvement and clinical governance procedures to improve clinical outcomes at the institute.