Dr Mazin Mirza

Three words define Mazin: Humanitarian. Adventurer. Healer. 

Characterised by his adventurous spirit, his integrity and his boundless love and capacity for helping others, he had a zest for life and an infectious sense of humour. Mazin took life as an adventure in which he always sought new and greater heights.

Mazin died just a few months after being diagnosed with Pancreatic Neuroendocrine Cancer. He was 31.

Mazin was born in Leicester and attended Beauchamp College before reading Medical Genetics with Industry BSc (2015) at Leicester where he graduated with a First Class honours and won the year prize.

He went on to Hull-York Medical School to read Medicine – completing his degree at the height of the pandemic in 2020 and finishing in the top 10% of his year group. Thereafter followed roles at Sandwell & West Birmingham NHS Trust where he was also an associate tutor, and University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust, before he became a Resident Doctor at Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton.

During his academic foundation post he published in medical journals, presented internationally, and designed his own teaching programme for medical students. He also went on to gain additional qualifications in tropical medicine and global hygiene, pre-hospital emergency care and peri-operative medicine.

Mazin had a love of travelling, hiking and mountain climbing. He also took every opportunity to engage in voluntary and humanitarian work, volunteering in Kenya where he lived with the Maasai raising £1,500 in the process; in the Amazon where he treated indigenous people; in Peru; and in Athens where he worked with refugees.

He undertook a sponsored climb to Everest basecamp and amassed £2,450 for Childreach International and with his brother, Eren, completed the equivalent of five marathons in seven days raising over £1,000 for Age UK.  

Following his death on 21 July 2024, a fundraiser in his memory amassed over £15,000 (including Gift Aid) for Leicestershire hospice Loros. A blog about his passing is here.

A water well has been built and dedicated to him in Gambia by Humanity First and an obituary appeared in the BMJ. In the days before he died, Mazin wrote the following poem for a memorial plaque at the University of Leicester botanic garden where a mountain ash has been planted in the south side of the garden to commemorate his love of mountain climbing:

When the wilds of despair surround you,
Let hope and love be your armour.
Have faith that they will endure,
And you will rise to greet the warm breath of dawn once more.

Mazin aspired to working for Doctors Without Borders. He also wrote a series of articles on Medium. In one article, he wrote of his ‘perennial drive to become a humanitarian doctor or die in the attempt’ …

Mazin leaves his younger brother Eren who graduated from York, his elder brother Zeki (PhD Mathematics, Leicester 2014) and his parents Ather (English, Leicester 1982) and Badri. In his final weeks at LOROS, he became engaged and he prepared a series of podcasts for friends and family to listen to and remember him by. He published a series of poems and articles and gave gifts for those he left behind.

The quality of Mazin’s character was such that it also elevated those who had the privilege of being close to him. Everyone was better for having Mazin in their lives and he will live on through the good deeds of those he inspired.