Syed Modasser Ali

Syed Modasser Ali is a Bangladeshi ophthalmic surgeon, born on 1 February 1946 in Gopalganj, who served as Health, Family Welfare and Social Welfare adviser to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina from 2009 to 2013, with the rank of a senior cabinet minister. He is regarded as one of the pioneers of community ophthalmology (public eye health), and his book Community Ophthalmology (1985) is considered the first textbook on the subject. He founded Mojibunnessa Eye Hospital, the first registered eye hospital in Bangladesh, and was the founding editor-in-chief of the Bangladesh Ophthalmic Journal, the country's first peer-reviewed ophthalmic journal. ^{1 2}

He was born in Gopalganj, then part of Faridpur district in the Bengal Presidency, to a Bengali family. He studied at Dhaka College and Dhaka Medical College, specialised in anterior-segment and cataract surgery, and became a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons and of the Royal College of Ophthalmologists in Britain. ¹

He held leading posts across Bangladesh's medical and research institutions: director-general of health services for the government in 2001; dean of the Faculty of Postgraduate Medicine and Research at Dhaka University (1998–2001); chairman of the Bangladesh Medical Research Council (1998–2003, and again 2017–2024); director and professor emeritus of the National Institute of Ophthalmology in Dhaka (1997–2001); and chairman of the governing body of Dhaka City College (2015–2024). Under his chairmanship the Medical Research Council received the WHO 50th Anniversary Primary Healthcare Development Award in 1998. He also chaired the board of trustees of the Bangladesh Community Clinic programme from 2010 to 2024, and served three separate terms as a member of the executive board of the World Health Organization. ¹

Ali has been a lifelong anti-smoking campaigner and played a central role in the banning of smoking in public places in Bangladesh. As health adviser he oversaw changes in legislation to comply fully with the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, and he was vice-president of the Convention's Conference of the Parties for the WHO South-East Asia Region from 2010 to 2012. He received the WHO World No Tobacco Day Award in 2010. ¹

While a medical student at Dhaka Medical College he was elected vice-president of the Bangladesh Chhatra League, the student wing of the Awami League; he later terminated any official affiliation with the party but remained the personal physician of its president, Sheikh Hasina, and was active in negotiations over sending her abroad for treatment during her detention in 2008. In 2012 the Anti-Corruption Commission said it had information that he had influenced a fraudulent Sonali Bank loan to the Hallmark Group; he denied the allegation, and no charges were brought after a parliamentary committee investigation. ¹

He received the Bangladesh Ophthalmological Society's Lifetime Achievement Award in 2008 and a Freedom Fighter Award from the Bangladesh National Personality Research Centre for his services during the Liberation War, and in 2013 he was named one of the twenty most innovative surgeons alive by a healthcare education website. ¹

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