Shaukat Khanum

Shaukat Khanum, was a housewife. She was born in Jalandhar, before the partition of India. Khan credits his mother as having played a deep influential role in his upbringing. In 1985, she died due to cancer. The helplessness and personal experience of seeing his mother diagnosed with cancer, which became the cause of her death, motivated Khan to build a cancer hospital in Pakistan where those who could not afford expensive care could be treated well. In 1994, the Shaukat Khanum Memorial Cancer Hospital & Research Centre was founded by Khan in Lahore, and named in memory of his mother. A second Shaukat Khanum cancer hospital has been inaugurated in Peshawar, while plans are underway for a third hospital to be located in Karachi.