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Leesburg Doctor Has a Dedicated Global Presence
Leesburg Doctor Has a Dedicated Global Presence
By Joe Motheral
At age 74, Loudoun County physician Javed Akhtar remains an active member of the Association of Physicians of Pakistani Descent of North America (APPNA), a nonprofit, philanthropic organization founded in 1976.
Thanks to financial contributions and doctors like himself who donate their time, its mission is to provide medical and related free services for people in need.
“We have about 2,000 active members worldwide, 190 in the DMV,” Dr. Akhtar said. “Recently in Loudoun County we did the Covid injections—about 1,800, that we donated to different organizations for free. And during the Covid crisis we provided food distribution” that involved the delivery of food packages and rides for seniors.
One winter, the organization donated food and blankets to the homeless in Washington. And another time, Dr. Akhtar said, “We bought laptop computers for students in one of the poorer high schools in the District.”
Several years ago, he traveled to Bangladesh where, he said, there were “over 50,000 refugees who had fled Myanmar.” During his three-week stay, he provided medical treatment. The organization also responds to natural disasters like earthquakes and tsunamis with medical assistance.
Once after an Indonesian earthquake, “We set up a medical clinic and ran it,” he said. “Having done so, we had the local doctors come in and we supplied the equipment.” After Pakistan was hit by an earthquake in 2010, “We came in with not only medical help but also tents, medical supplies and food. And we started schools there. We worked with the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad.”
He personally visits Guatemala once a year for a week and “we donate vaccinations.”
Dr. Akhtar, originally from Pakistan, became interested in medicine because when he was in junior high school, an older brother had gone to medical school and was a practicing physician.
“We always talked about his experiences,” he said. “You make a decent living but also serve humanity—taking care of people who are grateful.”
After high school he began his own medical journey. In 1971, he earned a medical degree from King Edward Medical College in Lahore, Pakistan. He moved to the U.S. the following year and studied at the Brooklyn Cumberland Medical Center in Brooklyn, NY.
He undertook a two-year surgical residency at the Buffalo General Hospital in Buffalo, NY , then in 1976-77 completed an ear, nose, throat and beck residency at McGill University in Montreal. That was followed by two more years of study at the University of Miami.
He’s certified in his specialty and also is a Fellow in the American College of Surgeons and the International College of Surgeons. He’s published in the journal of the ENT and has an academic affiliation as a clinical assistant professor in the Department of Family Medicine at SUNY at Buffalo.
After spending 38 years living in Pennsylvania, he and his family moved to the outskirts of Leesburg in 2018, where he continues to practice, and, like many of his medical colleagues, said he occasionally has time to play a little golf.
