Zahira Abdin led the effort against it, establishing the Free Pyramid Rheumatic Heart Center in 1957, as well as its network of schools and clinics throughout Egypt .

She pioneered community and preventative medicine in Egypt, establishing multiple academic and charitable organizations, including the Centre of Rheumatic Heart Diseases in Children, the Child's Health Institute, the Association of Friends of Children's Heart Diseases, two orphanages, a retirement home for women, and a department for low-cost surgery.

[3] Abdin began working in education as a supervisor for the Society of Muslim Youth, an organization run by urban women focused on providing disadvantaged women with practical and religious tools to run healthy and religiously sound homes.

[1] With the expansion of economic opportunities under Anwar Sadat's Infitah policy, Abdin realized that there would be an increase in demand for foreign language education.

She wanted the students to have strong Islamic faith and values, while still being able to work in the secular, globalizing English-speaking world.

Zahira Abdin also co-founded the Association of Egyptian Women Doctors, editing its journal's first issues.

[1] At the request of the Ministry of Social Affairs, Abdin presided over the struggling Young Women's Muslim Association, leaving it stable after her twenty years work there.

In 1990 the First Lady of Egypt, Suzanne Mubarak, awarded her the honorary title ‘Mother of Egyptian Doctors’.