Australia Day honours: Dr Mukesh Haikerwal strives for greater system

WHETHER it’s helping shape national or international health systems, Dr Mukesh Haikerwal has always had the best sounding board — his humble suburban Melbourne patients.

WHETHER it’s helping shape national or international health systems, Dr Mukesh Haikerwal has always had the best sounding board — his humble suburban Melbourne patients.

Almost 30 years after emigrating to Australia and setting up a practice in Melbourne’s west, Dr Haikerwal led the Victorian and national arms of the Australian Medical Association before heading up the Paris-based World Medical Association between 2011-2015.

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Dr Mukesh Haikerwal has always had the best sounding board — his humble suburban Melbourne patients.

But despite driving improvements to practitioner conditions, patient care and advocating for health evolution on a grand scale, Dr Haikerwal has maintained his daily Altona practice, which he says “defines him”.

“It is good to be grounded, and people in the western suburbs are very earthy people so I get very fair feedback on what is going on,” Dr Haikerwal said.

“It is a very firm grounding into the bigger picture and I have always done this all the way through state, national and international roles.

“I always enjoy having those conversations.”

Awarded the Officer of the order of Australia in 2011, Dr Haikerwal will today be made a Companion of the General Division of the Order of Australia for his eminent leadership in the medical industry, as well as his commitment to nonprofits including beyondblue, the Cancer Council and Brain Injury Australia, and to western Melbourne.

With his wife Dr Karyn Alexander working beside him, Dr Haikerwal was shaped by his earliest experiences working marathon hours a junior doctor in England before moving to Australia and releasing its leading health s system could still do much better.

Dr Mukesh Haikerwal will today be made a Companion of the General Division of the Order of Australia.

“I very firmly remember not wanting to go for each role along the way and being persuaded that it was the right thing to do, and that I’d do OK at it,” he said.

“It has not been a great plan, but the agendas have all come together.

“We need to keep striving for the best. Even though things may be quite good in our system, there is a whole lot more we need to do to make them better in the future, because we need to keep progressing or we go backwards.”

Dr Haikerwal was almost killed in a 2008 Grand Final Day attack by five men in Williamstown but overcame serious head injuries that left him in a coma and with a long recovery from major brain injury.

Rather than turn his back on his career and advocacy, the father of three stepped up his activities through a range of international roles determined to make the most of a second chance at life armed with personal knowledge of what a patient must endure.

But first and foremost, Dr Haikerwal is a proud suburban GP.