He used medicine to help champion peace
Renowned Toronto doctor started a charity focused on international health
Dr. Arnold Noyek, a renowned otolaryngologist known for championing mandatory hearing tests for newborns and for founding an international charity that sought peace in the Middle East through academic exchanges in universities and medical centres, died on Friday.
Noyek, 81, had been hospitalized since November. He was diagnosed with multiple myeloma in 2011.
“He took a turn for the worse in the past week, and it was a significant turn for the worse,” said Shawna Novak, chief operating officer of the Canada International Scientific Exchange Program (CISEPO), which was founded by Dr. Noyek.
Dr. Noyek died at Baycrest Health Sciences at 1:40 p.m. with his family by his side.
Dr. Noyek was born in Dublin, Ireland, and immigrated to Canada in 1940. He attended the University of Toronto and graduated from medical school and later went on to be trained in otolaryngology — specializing in ear, nose, throat, head and neck surgery — at Manhattan Eye, Ear and Throat Hospital in New York City. He worked at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto since 1966 and was the hospital’s otolaryngologist in chief for more than 10 years.
While at Mount Sinai, Noyek and his team developed a groundbreaking method to detect deafness in babies by measuring brainwave patterns. Because hearing loss in babies can affect learning development and socialization, early identification and intervention helps infants adapt more quickly.
This screening procedure was adopted as provincial health policy in Ontario in 2001. To date, more than a million babies have been screened.
Dr. Noyek was also a professor of otolaryngology at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health and a professor of radiology at the University of Toronto. He worked as the director of international continuing education for the faculty of medicine at the university and was an adviser on global health education to the Dalla Lana school.
Dr. Noyek’s dedication to international health care was evident with CISEPO.
Founded in 1984, the nonprofit works to bring together health-care professionals from around the world and, by so doing, helps communities find common ground. The charity has had an impact on millions of people around the world, including in the U.S, the U.K and across the Middle East.
For his contributions to health care, Dr. Noyek was inducted as an Officer in the Order of Canada in July 2013.
Dr. Noyek inspired those around him, including his longtime friend Wendy Switzer Myles. She is a board of director at CISEPO and remembers her friend as being energetic and full of life.
“Spending 10 minutes with him was like spending an hour with anyone else because he was so creative and so full of wonderful ideas,” she said.
Dr. Noyek and CISEPO, were the recipients of the Canadian Red Cross Power of Humanity Award, which was presented by the Queen of Jordan in 2004.
He was also the recipient of the Canadian Society for International Health Lifetime Achievement Award in 2005.
And from the University of Toronto, he received the Colin R. Woolf Award for long term contributions to continuing education in 2006 and the prestigious Ludwik and Estelle Jus Memorial Human Rights Prize in 2009.
Dr. Noyek was married to his childhood sweetheart, Judy Noyek. Together they had five children and 14 grandchildren.