Azad Moopen

Azad Moopen was born in 1953 in an Indian village Kalpakancheri in Malappuram district of Kerala. His family owned a bulk of land in the area of Kalpakancheri, a part of Valluvanad in Southern Malabar. His Father, Ahmed Unni Moopen, was involved in the freedom struggle during the 1940s. Azad Moopen passed the MBBS with a gold medal and an MD in general medicinefrom the Calicut Medical College, Kerala, and a diploma in chest disease from Delhi University.

In 1982, he 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 starting a single Doctor practice at his own clinic. Over the last 26 years, he established a chain of Health care facilities in West Asia with 175 unit hospitals, poly clinics, pharmacies and diagnostic centers in UAE, Qatar, Oman and Saudi Arabia. His firm, Aster DM Health care employs about 10,000 people in the Middle East, and serves more than 7 million patients a year.

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 & Health care 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 program.

He was the Gulf Area convener of the Malabar Airport Development Action Committee (MADAC), which spearheaded the efforts for the establishment of Kozhikode International Airport through a public–private partnership initiative in the 1990s. Kozhikode International Airport 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 (AKMG) and the Association of Indian Muslims (AIM) in the UAE.

Dr. Moopen initiated innovative corporate social responsibility (CSR) programmes and some of the ongoing non-profit activities of the Foundation are establishment of stand-alone community dialysis centers, early disease detection and cancer screening centers, radiation oncology centers, 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, various health and safety awareness campaigns etc., 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 Health care, chaired by Moopen, made a donation of US$ 2.72 million to Al Jalila Foundation, a UAE based charitable organization promoting medical education and research.

Dr. Moopen has set up Dr. Moopen’s Foundation for uplifting and extending Health care charitable benefits to downtrodden in wider geographies. Foundation focuses on Health care, educational and social philanthropies through "Healing Touch" activities. He has recently gave 20% of his wealth (about Rs.1 billion) for the philanthropic activities for support of the social changes.