Clinic is a model to follow, mayor says at opening

Shelley Sekula-Gibbs, Nasruddin Rupani, Mayor Bill White, Councilman M. J. Khan, and Dilawar Ajani cut the ribbon opening the new Ibn Sina Foundation Community Clinic.
R. Clayton McKee: For The Chronicle

Ibn Sina Foundation opens new clinic Thursday

The Ibn Sina Foundation will open its new, 5,000-squre-foot community medical center Thursday at 11226 S. Wilcrest Drive.

A grand-opening ceremony will be held at 11 a.m. with Mayor Bill White as the chief guest.

The foundation is dedicated to serving low-income families in cardiology, pediatrics, gynecology, diagnostic imaging, oncology and ophthalmology, said Dr. Aijaz Khowaja, the foundation’s chief executive officer.

The center also includes a pharmacy and dental clinic.

The project’s cost, including equipment and furnishings, is $1.80 million, he said.

The new facility was built with funds from Houston’s philanthropic community, including The Houston Endowment, Inc., Cullen Trust for Healthcare, Rockwell Foundation, The Meadows Foundation, Simmons Foundation and St. Luke’s Episcopal Health Charity, as well as a block development grant of $850,000 from the city of Houston.

The Ibn Sina Foundation was established in 2001 by a group of local physicians, businesses, and health care professionals to bridge the gap between the health care needs of a rapidly expanding population of under-served families and the ability of existing public institutions to meet their needs, said Nasruddin Rupani, chairman of the foundation.

The foundation and clinic is named after Ibn Sina, an ancient Islamic philosopher known for his medical canons that have influenced both Eastern and Western worlds.

Its mission is to provide preventive and primary care for new immigrants who have limited resources, Rupani said. Also, seniors in the families of new immigrants require help because they cannot afford health insurance, he said.

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Houston Mayor Bill White on Thursday spoke at the opening of The Ibn Sina Foundation Community Clinic, a $1.8 million state-of-the-art medical facility, and lauded it as “an extremely cost-effective model” that could be duplicated throughout the city.

Referring to the clinic’s emphasis on preventive medicine, paperless technology and volunteer doctors, White said it was an occasion “not only to celebrate, but to learn.”

He specifically praised the Muslim community’s role in bringing the clinic to Houston.

The city has gone from no non-profit public health facilities to nine in the last three years, he said.

“We need to rely on frontline physicians to craft a health-care system,” instead of letting the politicians, lobbyists, insurance companies or pharmaceutical companies do the job, White said.

The Ibn Sina Foundation chairman Nasruddin Rupani said his group is committed to providing health care to those who cannot afford it. Nearly 1.1 million of the 3.5 million people in Harris County are uninsured, and only 38 percent of the uninsured have some access to health care, he said.

The foundation’s clinics in Houston and Clear Lake have treated 43,000 patients in the last five years. This year, the two clinics will serve 15,000 people, Rupani said.

The opening of the Southwest Houston clinic is “a milestone in providing comprehensive health care for underinsured and uninsured families,” he said.

The lack of health-care access to uninsured people is “an invisible disaster,” unlike Hurricanes Katrina or Rita, he said.

Rupani also outlined the foundation’s next project: building a child-care development center on land behind the new clinic.

The proposed center will cost about $1.8 million, and its operational cost would be about $250,000 a year, he said.

Donations have already started coming in for this project and the foundation would expect help from the city of Houston as well, he said.

The proposed center will have a Montessori school, day-care center, after-school programs for high school students and a learning center for parents and children.

Councilman M. J. Khan, in whose district the clinic is located, said the clinic’s purpose is to serve humanity as a whole without prejudice.

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