APJCN

"For an outstanding and sustained contribution to the nutritionally-related well-being and health of peoples in the Asia Pacific Region"

Khalid Bin Abdul Kadirwas born on 3rd June 1948 in Johore, Malaysia. Early in his career Khalid showed exceptional personal and academic qualities. At Monash University Medical School, where he graduated in 1975, he shone as one who was eager, enthusiastic and committed to health care, to its underpinning psychosocial and biomedical sciences and to his patients and colleagues. He inevitably became a good doctor, scientist and specialist physician working in metabolic medicine and endocrinology. He acknowledged the importance of a value system and of lifestyle in optimising health. Part of his post-graduate training was in the Clinical Nutrition and Metabolism Unit at Prince Henry’s Hospital, now the Monash Medical Centre, Melbourne. On his return to Malaysia, the place of his birth, he became noted for championing quality in medical practice and the pursuit of research, when there was little in his field. Young people began to pursue their own clinical and research careers with him as Deputy Dean from May 1988 to February 1990 at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia’s (UKM) teaching hospital in Kuala Lumpur. Papers began to appear about Malaysian ongoing and emerging nutritional and metabolic problems - iodine deficiency disorders, diabetes and obesity. His leadership became apparent in professional affairs, becoming the President of the ASEAN Federation of Endocrine Societies in 1992. In May 1990, he became Professor and Head of Medicine at UKM and, on 18th February 1990, Dean of Medicine. He has nurtured and supported Asia Pacific developments in medicine and his speciality, and provided a striking role model for young Malaysians in nutrition and metabolic medicine.