3 CMs tell Dr Shawl: Kashmir needs brick kilns, not hospitals

World’s top cardiologist’s dream of setting up hospital in Srinagar remains unfulfilled

Ahmed Ali Fayyaz

SRINAGAR, Apr 17: Washington DC-based interventional cardiologist, Dr Fayaz Shawl, who has the unbeaten distinction of having performed more than 20,000 angioplasty procedures in the world, has failed to get permission for establishing a super-specialty cardiovascular hospital in Nishat area of his hometown Srinagar in the last over two years. In a desperately written letter to Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, he has finally threatened to dispose off the land he had acquired in 2008 if the state officialdom continued to sleep over his dream project by the end of next month.

Posted as a junior surgeon at a public health centre at Shahdara Sharief (Rajouri) in 1974, after completing his MBBS from Government Medical College Srinagar, Dr Shawl had joined United States of America Army in 1980. He had completed his post graduation studies and many other top degrees in interventional cardiology from UK and USA before performing the first ever angioplasty procedure in the US armed forces in 1981. Being the world’s highest profile interventional cardiologist, Dr Shawl has been the family physician of top celebrities who include former US Vice President Dick Cheney, former Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharief, many Bollywood and Hollywood film icons and a number of the Indian governors, Chief Ministers and Union cabinet ministers.

Working as Director International Cardiology Washington Adventist Hospital and a Clinical Professor of Medicine at George Washington University, a born and brought up in Srinagar Dr Shawl has also the credit of having trained India’s topmost cardiologists including Dr Ashok Seth, Dr Upendra Kaul, Dr Ashwin Mehta, Dr Mathew and many others who are running cardiac centers like Maxwell, Apollo Hospitals and Medi-city.

With the dream of setting up a cardiac centre, mainly for promotion of medical tourism in Kashmir, alongwith a non-profit wellness centre for the patients of Jammu & Kashmir, Dr Shawl had returned to Srinagar after 30 years. Three Chief Ministers in succession---Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, Ghulam Nabi Azad and now Omar Abdullah---have given him assurances but not the permission he required for setting up the modern clinical facility. Plush with assurances of support from Mufti, Dr Shawl had purchased a piece of land for raising his dream project in the picturesque Zabarvan foothills in Nishat area.

Although the proposed site was far away from the restricted green belt and did not fall under forest, wildlife and other notified areas, permission of land use change was never issued by the authorities in the last over two years. Constructions to be raised on agriculture land are cleared by the municipal authorities only after a proper permission of land use change from the Minister incharge Revenue. Unscrupulous entrepreneurs, well versed with the trick of making shortcuts, often adopt the strategy of recording the area as ‘barren land’ for three years, which neutralizes the obligation of seeking permission of land use change from the competent authority. Hundreds of high pollution industrial units, including more than 400 unauthorised brick kilns, have been laid by such industrialists in Kashmir valley in the last 12 years.

“His problem is that he is a Kashmiri American. Had he been simply a Kashmiri, he would have managed to get permission in 2007 itself. He is one of the richest professionals but can not pay bribes to officers and politicians to offset the legal procedure”, one of Dr Shawl’s local promoters said. He explained that entire cost of the project was to be born by Dr Shawl out of his personal earning for 30 years besides donations from a galaxy of celebrities under his treatment. He said that India’s richest diamond merchant and a Dubai-based businessman, Harshad Mehta, whose life was saved by Dr Shawl with a Diamond Drill procedure in UAE, had contributed a large amount of money for the Kashmir hospital.

On the pattern of Shawl Cardiovascular Center at Zulekha Hospital in Dubai, Dr Shawl had planned to equip his Srinagar center with the most modern facilities including two state-of-the-art cardiac catheterization laboratories, a 20-bed Tran scare holding unit (for pre-operative and post-operative management), one fully equipped cardiac operating room, a 10-bed intensive care unit, a 10-bed coronary care unit, 50 fully incorporated telemetry beds, one echocardiography laboratory, a nuclear cardiology testing center and a non-invasive endovascular laboratory.

Dr Shawl had also planned to raise a fully equipped auditorium for 100 people besides a hostel for 50 attendants and patients arriving in from rural areas of the state. For completely free treatment of the patients from Jammu & Kashmir, Dr Shawl also proposed a wellness centre equipped with gym, swimming pool and other peripheral services.

A renowned philanthropist, Dr Shawl has spent an amount of over Rs 2 Crore on the high risk interventional procedures he conducted on the Kashmiri patients in 2007 and 2008 at SKIMS, Soura. During these operations, normally possible in Delhi, Mumbai and other metropolitan cities, Dr Shawl contributed and planted nearly 100 imported balloons (stents) on the economically poor patients at SKIMS. He is scheduled to arrive in Srinagar on May 31st with similar equipment worth Rs 1.25 Crore which he will be implanting on J&K patients on his third trip at SKIMS.

Dr Shawl revealed to Early Times in an email from Washington DC that Chief Minister Omar Abdullah’s response to his request was highly reassuring. He said that Chief Minister had immediately issued instructions to his bureaucracy for processing the permission of land use change on urgent basis. He said that the ground breaking event would he held on the site on June 4th. He, however, made it clear that if he failed to get the permission, he would dispose off the property fully and give it to a charity.

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