Who is Dr Lutfi Fadil Lokman

Since his fledgling days as a medical student, Dr Lutfi Fadil Lokman had been looking for ways not only provide healthcare for the poor, also to keep the effort financially sound.

He co-founded Hospital Beyond Boundaries (HBB) on May 22, 2012 while still studying at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM), and went on to set up a clinic in Cambodia made of repurposed shipping containers. Work is under way to expand it to include a maternal hospital.

HBB also runs a health screening programme for the homeless in the Chow Kit area, Kuala Lumpur.

Little had he known however, his efforts would propel him to international renown on Sept 19, when he was among 17 people given recognition by the UN as Young Leaders for the Sustainable Development Goals during a ceremony at the UN headquarters in New York. They were selected from a pool of 18,000 nominees from all around the world.

His efforts also earned a special mention during Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi’s address to the UN General Assembly that month, and during Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak’s budget speech on Oct 21.

Lutfi - who had just turned 29-years-old last week - is a medical officer at the government’s Institute of Health Systems Research’s (IHSR) health economics department since April.

He shared his story during an Oct 4 interview with Malaysiakini in Kuala Lumpur:

MOST OF LIFE I HAVE BEEN LIVING AS A ‘SON OF A DOCTOR’ - always seeing my father (an ear-nose-throat surgeon and academician) going on-call, always seeing my mother (a pharmacist) with all the medications and drugs.

That’s how I grew up, seeing nothing more than to be a doctor.

Honestly, now I’ve discovered that my interest is more towards economics, social economics, so that’s what I am growing to specialise in the field of public health.

I am interested in treating patients, but I believe that treating the system is much more interesting for me, and treating the whole community.

I AM IN THE (IHSR) HEALTH ECONOMICS DEPARTMENT. In health economics, we study about the economics of health - how can we finance health, how we can make it sustainable.

For example, under the current system where you pay RM1 for all your medication and you can see a specialist for RM5. It is one of the best in the world actually, but we study how can we maintain that or how can we fund that.So basically, it is about researching on health systems and advising the government how to proceed with the future of healthcare.

I SPENT MY FIRST THREE YEARS (OF MEDICAL SCHOOL) IN BANDUNG, INDONESIA - Padjadjaran University in Bandung - and the following three years in UKM. It was my first year in Bandung that was the first time I managed to get out of Kuala Lumpur and live among extreme poverty in Indonesia.

When I lived among the poor, I realised that in Indonesia, I like their system because although as a country, their economy is not that good, but they still try and strive to give treatment to the rural and to the poor people.

It was in Indonesia, actually, that I discovered this field of public health, where... all these things lah, like how you finance the poor, how you treat the whole community by creating a system that works, by community empowerment.

All these things got me interested in the field of public health.