Brilliant Plan Helping Female Pakistani Doctors Return To Practicing Medicine

DoctHERS is making it possible for female Pakistani doctors to keep practicing even after they get married and have children, thanks to telemedicine.

70% of Pakistani medical students are women.

So you would think there is no shortage of female doctors in the country.

Yet, education runs up against cultural expectations.

That when a woman has a baby, she gives up her career and stays home.

This has meant the end of many promising careers.

It also means with fewer female doctors, many women aren’t getting the medical attention they should because they would never go see a male doctor.

Along comes two brilliant women, Dr. Sara Khurram and Dr. Iffat Zafar with a great solution.

They call it, DoctHERs.

Ziad Zafar produced this report for the BBC.

Fast Company reports so far, DoctHERS has built eight clinics, including six near its base in Karachi and another two in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province in the north. They have a simple setup: two rooms, basic medical equipment, a small pharmacy, and a laptop. Patients walk in, a nurse performs an examination, and enters information on the laptop. Then, a doctor appears on the screen to offer a consultation.

Each visit costs about $1.

What do you think of this idea? Please share in the comments below.

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Brilliant Plan Helping Female Pakistani Doctors Return To Practicing Medicine

by DarynKagan time to read: 1 min
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