A member of the board of trustees for the Bengal Foundation, Dr. Shafquat Hossain Khundkar, has been awarded the prestigious international humanitarian award, The Real Awards, for his extraordinary contribution to healthcare. This award, presented by Save the Children and Frontline Health Workers Coalition, recognized the tireless efforts of health workers around the globe, working to improve the lives of people everywhere. This year, Dr. Khundkar from Bangladesh was one of 12 health care providers from around the world to have received this award.

Ten years ago, Dr. Khundkar founded Bangladesh’s first plastic and reconstructive surgery residency program. Residents in this program are chosen in part because they have an interest in doing humanitarian work with the poor. Now, there are more than twice the number of plastic surgeons in Bangladesh that there were a decade ago. Over the years, Dr. Khundkar has performed thousands of surgeries to correct disabling burns, clefts and hand injuries, and his surgical residents are now able to expand those numbers exponentially. Dr. Khundkar is currently a professor of plastic surgery at the Popular Medical College Hospital in Dhaka. He served as head of the plastic and reconstructive surgery department at Dhaka Medical College for many years. And in 1990, Dr. Khundkar began working with ReSurge surgical teams in Bangladesh, providing free reconstructive surgery to survivors of severe burns and people with clefts and hand injuries. Ten years later, Dr. Khundkar and ReSurge established a Surgical Outreach Program in Dhaka, where he and his team of colleagues and medical residents provide surgical care for the poor year-round.