Surgeon Pavel Pafko receives Arnost Lustig Prize for courage

Czech surgeon Pavel Pafko received the Arnost Lustig Prize for civil courage, humanity and justice today, the organisers from the Czech-Israeli Mutual Chamber of Commerce have told CTK. The prize, bearing the name of Czech-Jewish writer and Holocaust survivor Arnost Lustig (1926-2011), is annually bestowed on a living Czech citizen who, like Lustig, contributed ti the preservation and development of the values important for the entire society. Pafko headed the Clinic of Surgery of the 1st Faculty of Medicine of Charles University and the Motol University Hospital in Prague in 1992-2010. He drew high attention mainly in December 1996 when he operated on then Czech President Vaclav Havel to remove his lung tumour. In December 1997, Pafko and his team performed the first lung transplant in the Czech Republic.