FACE IN THE NEWS
Lord Darzi
Daily Mail
July 1, 2008 Tuesday
London
HE insists that he is first and foremost a doctor.
Indeed, within five months of taking up his Cabinet post, Lord Darzi
was on his knees in the House of Lords saving the life of a fellow
Labour peer.
Lord Brennan had a heart attack during a debate last November.
Lord Darzi (pictured) leapt over the benches and administered
mouth to mouth, a heart massage and electric shock treatment using
a defibrillator.
But saving lives is what 48-year-old Ara Darzi is used to – not
piloting bills through Parliament.
He was born in 1960 in Baghdad, after his Armenian parents fled to
Iraq during the First World War to escape the genocide by Turkey. He
was brought up in the Russian Orthodox faith of his LORD DARZI family,
although he went to a strict Jewish school.
Aged 17, Darzi moved with his family to Dublin to study medicine,
later becoming a surgeon and earning the nickname ‘Robodoc’.
A keen Pink Floyd fan, he became a UK citizien in 2003, a year after
being knighted.
Despite being appointed Health Minister by Gordon Brown in June 2007,
he still performs surgery on Friday and Saturdays and the transition
from doctor to minister has not always been smooth.
He has landed his boss in trouble several times, for instance by
admitting Labour’s pledge to end mixed-sex wards ‘cannot be met’.
And he embarrassed collegues by announcing pharmacists would be able
to hand out the Pill to under 16s without a prescription..