Cornelia Naylor for Burnaby Now writes, “Burnaby resident Zarif Akbarian was nine years old when he decided he wanted to be a doctor when he grew up. Many of the family members he lived with in his native Afghanistan were sick but had limited access to health care, he said.
“I could see people are suffering because of sicknesses and diseases they had, but there wasn’t really a cure for them,” he said. He said he had been forced to watch both his grandmother and grandfather suffer for a long time before they finally died of cancer. So, years later, after he graduated from medical school and started working as a GP, he said every day was “joyful.” “Because, for a doctor, nothing is better to see than happiness and happy face and relief,” he said.”