When Sudbury cardiologist Dr. Zulfikar Juma looks back on his long career, his fondest memories are for his early years in the Nickel City, in the mid-1980s and early 1990s.
“When I came here things got really exciting,” he said.
Thanks to Juma and a team of cardiac surgeons, nurses, cardiologists, technologists and anaesthetists Sudbury's Memorial Hospital was at the forefront of cardiac surgery in North America during that time.
“During that time, Sudbury Memorial Hospital had the best outcomes in bypass surgeries (in Ontario),” Juma said.
In 1984, Juma became one of the first cardiologists in Ontario to treat a patient with the clot-busting drug Streptokinase – which is now commonly used to treat patients who have experienced a heart attack.
A 17-year-old Laurentian University student arrived at the hospital with the symptoms of a severe heart attack.
“This guy was so young that he had nice clean arteries,” Juma said.
But when he stepped outside on a cold January day after a workout at the Laurentian gym, the -20 C temperature shocked his system and caused enough arterial constriction that it sent him to the hospital with the symptoms of a heart attack.
Juma got permission from hospital administration to use Streptokinase, which was still an experimental drug at the time, and it immediately opened up the young man's artery. He made a full recovery.
The next month, Juma became one of the first cardiologists in Canada to perform a coronary angioplasty on a patient.
Now common, the procedure sees a surgeon use a balloon to widen blocked or narrowed coronary arteries.
The hospital's administration once again trusted him to try the latest medical interventions to help his patients.
Juma, who retires on April 30, was born in Nairobi, Kenya, and knew from a young age he wanted to be a physician.
His grandfather owned a store that sold second-hand furniture and books, which made him an avid reader.
When he was around 12 years old, he said he read a book about medicine, that featured a section about the medical school in Pavia, Italy, which was one of the oldest in the world.
He knew then that he wanted to study medicine in Europe.
But instead of attending the University of Pavia, Juma went to the University of Manchester, in England.
He graduated from medical school in 1972, and moved to Toronto where he did his residency at a number of hospitals.
While he was working at Toronto's Sunnybrook, his father died of a sudden heart attack at the age of 54.
His father's loss to a heart attack encouraged Juma to specialize in cardiology.
After his residency he was offered a research position with the Ottawa Heart Institute, but turned down the job because he wanted his own clinical practice, and most importantly, to teach.
Juma's mother was a teacher, and it was always important for him to share the knowledge he had gained with others.
“It was my way of learning and memorizing things,” he said. “If you want to be good at what you do, teach it to someone.”
While Sudbury's Memorial Hospital was not a teaching hospital, Juma often hosted informal sessions to teach new techniques to nurses and other faculty in cardiology.
When the Northern Ontario School of Medicine opened in 2005, he was one of the first physicians in sudbury to jump on board as an instructor.
In 2015, the school gave him a letter of recognition for the high praise he had received from his students over the years.
While he will close his local practice on April 30, he said he won't completely retire.
“Doctors never retire, they just fade away,” Juma said.
He and his wife plan to move to Toronto so they can be closer to their daughter and grandchildren.
Juma said he plans to teach in Toronto, and maintain a close relationship with the Northern Ontario School of Medicine.
Some of his patients have said they will follow him to Toronto for annual check-ups.
But while he never expected to be in Sudbury long, Juma now says it will be difficult to leave the city he has called home for more than 30 years.
“I'm going to miss this place a lot,” he said.
