Ara Darzi, Baron Darzi of Denham

Ara Darzi, Baron Darzi of Denham (born 1960), is an Armenian-British surgeon, academic and politician. Born in Baghdad to Armenian parents displaced by the 1915 genocide, he moved to Ireland at seventeen to study medicine, qualifying at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland in 1984 and taking an MD at Trinity College Dublin. He became a consultant surgeon at Central Middlesex Hospital in 1991, moved to St Mary's Hospital and Imperial College London in 1994, and has held the Paul Hamlyn Chair of Surgery there, specialising in minimally invasive and robot-assisted surgery. He is co-director of the Institute of Global Health Innovation at Imperial. He has tried to reform the National Health Service in England and is recognised internationally as an advocate for innovative health system reform. He sat as a Labour member of the House of Lords until 2019 and now sits as an independent peer.