Head of Pathology Services and Pathology Residency, Cure Hospital
One of six children Dr. Omer Malikzai was born in Kabul, Afghanistan. When he was 10 years old, he and his family fled Afghanistan and moved to Peshawar, Pakistan because his home was destroyed on several occasions by rocket attacks, explosions and fighting with the Russians. The family lived for twelve years in Peshawar, during which time, he graduated from the Maulana Jalalabad Balhki High School. In 1998, he was accepted to the Nangarhar Medical faculty in Nangarhar, Afghanistan. The Taliban was in control there for his first three years of medical school and made life difficult by enforcing Sharia law. Dr. Malkizai persevered through this trial and graduated in 2005.
Following graduation from medical school, Dr. Malikzai worked for a year as the Medical Coordinator for the Afghan German Doctors Association and then as the Head of the Comprehensive Health Clinic (Oshtorgram) in Kapisa, Afghanistan. In April of 2007, he applied for and was accepted into Cure Hospital’s Histo and Cytopathology Residency Program. Soon after finishing the residency program in 2010, he assumed the position of the head of the pathology department, a position he has held ever since.
Dr. Malkzai believes that a career in the medical profession is a lifetime learning process and despite confronting many obstacles (including being robbed of his new car at gunpoint in 2019), he has never lost sight of his goals. He has availed himself to many and varied learning opportunities including workshops in leadership, basic ultrasonography, and a Pathology of Endometrium and Ovary seminar at the MVJ Medical College in Bangalore, India.
Dr. Malkzai has been a delegate and invited speaker at the 16th Conference of the South Asian Academy of Histopathologists and Cytopathologists in Ranchi Jharkhand India, is a member of the South Asian Countries Association (SACA) and has been a speaker locally in Kabul at the annual conference of the French Medical institute. He is one of very few Afghan pathologists to be the first and co-author of numerous publications coming out of Afghanistan.