Profile: Dr. Magdi Yacoub

(W)e are Egyptian, and when you come from a place like Egypt, the whole country loves you if you get famous. When I kissed Sophia Loren, they all think they kissed Sophia Loren too. When Magdi was knighted, the Egyptians were kneeling next to him. – Omar Sharif

You’ve certainly heard of Dr. Magdi Yacoub, one of Egypt’s most well-known names, but do you know how and why he’s reached this level? As the world’s most prominent and accomplished transplant surgeon, Dr. Yacoub has saved countless lives and is truly one of Egypt’s national treasures.

A graduate of Cairo University, Dr. Yacoub – who is also a “Sir” after being knighted in 1992 by Queen Elizabeth II – officially qualified to become a doctor in 1957.

In 1964, Dr. Yacoub left Egypt and began his lauded career in Britain’s best and most cutting-edge hospitals. He also did a teaching stint at the University of Chicago early on in his career, but he remained primarily in the UK, which he has called his second home.

“I owe a lot to Egypt, because I was educated here and when I was in medical school, I witnessed a lot of people suffering from heart disease,” he said in an interview in Cairo last year. But “The UK is my second country; I owe many of my accomplishments to the UK as well.”

In 1974, Dr. Yacoub became the first person to perform open heart surgery in Nigeria, assisted by a team of accomplished surgeons.

From 1980, Dr. Yacoub headed the Harefield Transplant Programme in London. Under his leadership, Dr. Yacoub and his team performed 1000 procedures (in his lifetime, he has logged around 2000 transplants!), making Harefield Hospital the UK’s leading transplant center.

Dr. Yacoub was known for going the full nine yards and beyond to make sure his patients would get the best treatment, traveling thousand of miles each year in a small aircraft to remove donor hearts for his patients.

In 1986, he was appointed Professor at the prestigious National Heart and Lung Institute at Imperial College London.

As one of the world’s best cardio doctors, Yacoub is also known for pioneering surgical techniques that have advanced the field of medicine as a whole, including a complicated procedure for switching the heart vessels of babies born with a particular congenital heart defect.

And recently in 2007, he was part of the team which made new heart parts from human cells – a remarkable achievement.

Now that Yacoub is in his 70’s, he still believes in making a difference in people’s lives.

Following his retirement from the National Health Service in 2001, Yacoub now focuses on his UK-based children’s charity Chain Of Hope, which he founded in 1995, and Egypt’s Magdi Yacoub Heart Foundation, which supports the Aswan Heart Center, opened in 2009.

Here are a few more facts about him you might not have known:

• He’s a Scorpio, born on Nov. 16, 1935 in Belbis, Ashraqya, Egypt

• He knew he wanted to be a heart surgeon at the age of four, when his father’s sister died of heart disease in her 20’s.

“I declared to him ‘I am going to be a heart surgeon!’ He (Yacoub’s father, also a surgeon) said, ‘Oh, don’t be ridiculous!’”

• He’s a charmer.

“He was quite a glamour boy, and a fantastically good surgeon,” a longtime female colleague said about him. “He was such a charismatic character…he had us all wrapped around his little finger.”

• He’s friends with former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who wrote the foreword to Yacoub’s book Moral Courage.

• You’ve probably heard about his work in the UK and Egypt, but his current projects include supporting research and surgical centers in places like Mozambique, Ethiopia, Burundi, Kenya and Jamaica.

• He doesn’t regret leaving Egypt.

“Leaving Egypt and the people I loved so much, and the environment I liked, was definitely worth it, because I also have great love for medicine and science.”

• He considers his wife a “saint” for putting up with his grueling schedule all these years.

“My family has felt, particularly my wife, that I haven’t been around on many occasions when I should have been around, especially when the children were growing up. She deals with it pretty well, in that she is very outspoken and if you were to ask her now she would tell you lots of stuff. That’s her way of dealing with it.”

• One thing that keeps him up at night is the level of inequality in the world.

“The image of people who have is not understood by the people who have not and that seems to be getting worse. That upsets me a lot.”

• He’s operated on several celebrities, including comedian Eric Morecambe and actor and friend Omar Sharif, who Dr. Yacoub convinced to cut down on smoking cigarettes – the main reason for his heart problems.

• Despite his success, Dr. Yacoub remains humble.

“It sounds like I’m being somebody important, which I’m not. I am but a tiny cog. My only purpose is to try and make a tiny bit of difference.”

“With knowledge comes responsibility. If you know something you are privileged, but you are also responsible. We owe it to the people.”

WE SAID THIS: Check out Dr. Yacoub’s charities, Chain Of Hope and Magdi Yacoub Heart Foundation.