Asad Latif

Asad is currently the Chair of the Department of Anaesthesiology at the Aga Khan University, Karachi. A graduate of the Aga Khan University Medical College, he did his internship in general surgery from the Hospital of Saint Raphael, New Haven, Connecticut, and completed a Residency in Anaesthesiology, starting at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, Massachusetts, and finishing from the State University of New York at Downstate, Brooklyn, New York in 2007. He then did a Fellowship in Adult Critical Care Medicine from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland. Dr. Latif joined the faculty at the Department of Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine at Johns Hopkins in 2008, and subsequently obtained a Masters of Public Health from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in 2012, focusing on Health Systems and International Health.

Dr. Latif’s areas of clinical expertise include anesthesiology, critical care medicine, transplant surgery, and vascular surgery. Aside from his active clinical responsibilities, Dr. Latif’s research interests lie in patient safety and quality improvement, with an emphasis on global surgical care, preventing hospital-acquired infections, improving patient outcomes and communication, and health system strengthening, particularly in developing countries. Prior to coming to Pakistan., he has led projects in Pakistan, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia looking at implementing a comprehensive patient safety-oriented approach to evaluate and address infections in their intensive care units. He is also part of the Global Alliance for Surgical, Obstetric, Trauma, and Anaesthesia Care, focusing on promoting surgical care as part of the global development agenda, and leading their efforts on developing a global perioperative data platform. Other research interests include evaluation and prevention of healthcare errors, the utility of telemedicine in intensive care units, and the implementation of communication tools and techniques to improve the care of obstetric emergencies. Working with the Gates Foundation, he is leading a recent project looking to improve national capacity to care for critically ill patients with COVID-19 through a multi-faceted approach involving infrastructure assessment, training, and teleconsultation.