Kurdish doctor Azad Najar successfully tests artificial heart pump in Sweden
STOCKHOLM,— A Kurdish-Swedish doctor Azad Najar has successfully tested a working artificial heart inside a pig’s body.
Azad Najar told the Kurdish section of Radio Sweden that he has been working on the heart pump for the last fourteen years. He hopes that the technology can eventually be used in humans.
“When I saw the artificial heart was operating inside the pig’s body and its health was improving, I burst into tears,” Najar said.
He said that he was inspired to begin working on artificial heart pumps because of the high rates of heart disease that he had come across. He added that his cousin suffered from a cardiac ailment.
“I want to make an artificial heart,” Dr. Azad Najar told a Swedish heart surgeon 18 years ago. The professor replied: “This is impossible. You cannot do this.”, Rudaw reported in January 2019.
His mother had a similar response when the doctor shared his ambition with her: “This is impossible my son. Only God can create a heart.”
Nearly two decades later, “It turned out my son was right. He did what he said he was going to do,” said Najar’s mother.
The artificial heart is in its final stage now and the Swedish heart surgeon has apologized to be negative to the idé of developing an artificial heart.
At Scandinavian Real Heart in the Swedish city of Västerås, Najar and his colleagues are busy completing the artificial heart, which is similar in size to the natural heart.
“The Swedish royal family told me they would support my project,” Najar told Rudaw. “It is nearly completed. We have a great team which is working intensively with the development of the artificial heart. Heart failure can no longer take the lives of all these people in the world.”
Najar is from the town of Zakho in Iraqi Kurdistan region. Due to his father’s political activities, his family moved to Baghdad when he was a child. His father was a well-known lawyer in Zakho and had taken part in Kurdistan’s political revolutions.
“When we moved to Baghdad, we had to speak Arabic outside. But we had to speak Kurdish at home,” Najar recalled.
He studied at the University of Mosul and obtained a medical degree. He said he was among the popular students at the university.
He moved to Sweden in the 1995. Four years later, he embarked on a mission to make an artificial heart, an organ that had always fascinated him. He has been working as a doctor at Västerås Central Hospital in Västerås, Sweden
Najar comes from a big family of nine. His parents are over ninety years of age and still living. One of his brothers is a distinguished professor in Sweden.
Copyright © 2019, respective author or news agency, Ekurd.net | rudaw.net | nrttv.com
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