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hen Jindan Mai fell and fractured her hip, her husband, Bashir Ahmad Chadoha, thought the challenge would be getting her back on her feet. But the ordeal began when he tried to find her a doctor. From their village in Yazman, Bahawalpur, he went looking far and wide for a female orthopaedic surgeon. Bahawalpur had none, neither did Multan. Bound by his conservative upbringing and unwilling to let a male doctor examine his young wife, Bashir finally put Jindan, their infant child and their savings on a bus to Lahore, nearly 600 kilometres away, where Mayo Hospital had a woman orthopaedic surgeon.
Stories like Jindan’s are not uncommon. For many families across Pakistan, particularly in rural and conservative communities, the idea of a male doctor examining female patients is deeply uncomfortable. “Bashir is not peculiar,” says Dr Asma Akram, senior registrar at the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at Mayo Hospital. “There are thousands of families like his. Over 70 per cent of people prefer their women being examined by a female surgeon. It’s not mistrust — it’s tradition. It creates a very real barrier to care when there are simply no female surgeons.”
Dr Akram is living proof of what can be achieved when that barrier is challenged. The first female to earn a master of surgery degree in orthopaedics from the University of Health Sciences, she remembers how she was often told she didn’t belong in the field. “People think orthopaedics is for men. They picture heavy hammers, long hours, physical strain. They say women can’t manage it all,” she recalls with a smile. “But that is a myth. Orthopaedics is about much more than strength — it’s about precision, patience and the will to restore people to their lives.”
Her will was tested over a decade of training. After graduating from Khawaja M Safdar Medical College, Sialkot, she entered postgraduate residencies that demanded long nights and relentless focus: general surgery in Sialkot; paediatric orthopaedics at Children’s Hospital, Lahore; and hand and upper limb surgery at CMH, Lahore. Quite frequently, she was the only woman in the room. “Yes, it was tough,” she admits, “but every child who stood straight after a clubfoot correction, every patient who walked again after a hip replacement, reminded me why I was there.”
Pakistan must do more than produce female doctors — it must keep them in the workforce, support them into specialties and create spaces where they thrive.
The field she champions is transformative. Orthopaedics deals with bones, joints, muscles, ligaments, tendons and the spine. It is the field of mended fractures, of reconstructed knees, of scoliosis straightened, of children running again after once being crippled. It is, as Dr Akram quotes William W Tipton Jr, “about restoring movement, independence and quality of life.” In Pakistan, where road accidents are frequent, polio survivors still seek care and sports injuries are on the rise, the importance of orthopaedics cannot be overstated. It is not just surgery — it is the return as well of dignity to lives once defined by pain alone.
The numbers tell a grim story. Pakistan has produced around 200,000 doctors since independence, half of them female, but nearly 36,000 of them are not practicing. Studies suggest that fewer than 10 per cent of orthopaedic faculty are women. The number of practicing female orthopaedic surgeons is even smaller. This creates a painful shortage. Women need care. Families want women to provide it. But the pipeline to produce those surgeons is narrow.
The consequences ripple across society. Families like Jindan’s spend scarce savings on travel and accommodation, delaying treatment until the pain becomes unbearable. In some cases, women quietly endure injuries or deformities rather than seek help. Others live with disabilities that could have been corrected if only the right doctor were available. Behind every number is a story of lost independence — a mother unable to carry her child, a grandmother unable to walk to the washroom, a girl unable to play cricket at school.
For Dr Asma Akram, these stories fuel a mission larger than herself. She wants young women in medical colleges to see orthopaedics not as a male preserve but as a calling. “We need more girls to step forward,” she says. “Pakistan is fifty per cent women. Seventy per cent of them prefer female doctors. That’s millions of patients who need us. Orthopaedics isn’t just bones — it’s about hope, confidence and freedom.”
Her own life is an example of balance. Apart from her profession, she is a wife and a mother. She talks fondly of her mother’s encouragement and her father’s quiet pride in her achievements. “They believed in me when others doubted,” she says. At work, she is part of a growing, though still small, network of female orthopaedic surgeons, many of whom she mentors informally. As an active member of the Pakistan Orthopaedic Association, she advocates for training opportunities and mentorship programmes tailored for women’s needs.
She jokes about the ironies of her profession. “Yes, sometimes the instruments seem heavy,” she laughs, “but so are the responsibilities of motherhood. If women can raise families, run households and excel in medicine, they can surely lift a surgical hammer too.”
Her words define a challenge, not just for women doctors but for the medical system as well. To meet the needs of its people, Pakistan must do more than produce female doctors — it must keep them in the workforce, support them into specialties and create spaces where they thrive. Otherwise, the gap will remain: families refusing male doctors, women patients denied timely care and surgeons like Dr Asma Akram forced to carry the load of a country that needs many more like her.
For Jindan Mai, the long journey to Lahore was worth it. She found a doctor she trusted, a surgeon who understood both her injury and her family’s values. For her doctor, it was yet another reminder of why she chose this field. It was a story that should never have been there in the first place; a story that could be rewritten, if only more women can brave the challenge.
The writer is a working journalist. He may be reached at rasheedali51214gmail.