Magdi Yacoub Heart Foundation
Founded and led by the internationally renowned heart transplant surgeon Professor Sir Magdi Yacoub,
The Magdi Yacoub Heart Foundation is an Egyptian NGO embarking on a truly exceptional project of enormous significance to the health and wellbeing of the people of Egypt and throughout the whole region.
Core objective is to establish—along the banks of the river Nile in Aswan—a medical centre of excellence and international standing dedicated to cardiovascular surgery, treatment and research. The Aswan Heart Centre provides hope, improves life chances, and serves the children, young people and adults of Egypt and the region.
The Aswan Heart Centre’s commitment to research will result in the transfer of knowledge, skills and experience across the region and beyond, creating a biomedical knowledge base, which can be exported to the world at large.
Dr Magdi Yacoub
Egyptian-British cardiothoracic surgeon. He is Professor of Cardiothoracic Surgery at Imperial College London.
Dr Magdi Yacoub’s major achievements may be summarised:
- establishing heart transplantation in the UK and becoming the world’s leading transplant surgeon
- establishing and becoming a master of the ‘Ross Procedure’ or pulmonary autograft, including a randomised control trial
- pioneering the modern arterial switch operation
- promoting the use of left ventricular assist devices for the ‘Bridge to Recovery’ and
- establishing the largest experience in the world
- establishing the Heart Science Centre, Magdi Yacoub Institute for research into the causes and treatment of cardiac disease
- establishing the Chain of Hope Charity which provides cardiothoracic surgical care to the developing world
- championing academic medicine, humanitarian surgery and becoming an example of a minority surgeon who has flourished in an institution-dominated field.
Honours and awards
- 1988 Bradshaw Lecture, Royal College of Physicians
- 1998 Texas Heart Institute Ray C. Fish Award for Scientific Achievement in Cardiovascular Disease
- 1999 Lifetime outstanding achievement award in recognition of contribution to medicine, Secretary of State for Health (UK)
- 2001 The Cleveland Clinic Foundation Heart Failure Summit : Kaufman Awardee
- 2003 Golden Hippocrates International Award for Excellence in Cardiac Surgery (Moscow)
WHO Prize for Humanitarian Services - 2004 International Society for Heart & Lung Transplantation Lifetime Achievement Award
- 2006 European Society of Cardiology Gold Medal
- 2007 Daily Mirror Pride of Britain Lifetime Achievement Award
- 2007 Honorary citizenships of the city of Bergamo, Italy[14]
- 2007 Medal of Merit, President, International Academy of Cardiovascular Sciences
- 2011 Order of the Nile for science and humanity
- 2012 American College of Cardiology Legend of Cardiovascular Medicine
- Yacoub was knighted in the 1992 New Year Honours and awarded the Order of Merit by HM The Queen in the 2014 New Year Honours.
