‘Around 85000 female doctors not working after getting medical education in Pakistan’

KARACHI: There are around 85000 female doctors, who completed their medical education on the expense of state or privately but they are not part of the medical workforce in Pakistan. If only 50 percent of these out-of-profession female doctors are mobilized, 70 percent health issues of people in low-income group communities can be resolved, experts said on Thursday.

“A large number of women in lower income group communities in Pakistan don’t have access to healthcare facilities but there are thousands of out-of-profession female doctors, who can be mobilized to serve these patients through telemedicine. This would not only lower disease burden but would also save thousands of lives in the country”, said Dr. Sara Saeed, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Sehat Kahani, a healthcare startup that is employing out-of-profession doctors to serve low-income group communities.

The healthcare organization has recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Pakistan Cardiac Society to start educating patients about heart diseases, cholesterol and blood pressure monitoring so that cardiac-care awareness and treatment facilities could be provided to low-income group communities at their door steps.

Dr. Sara maintained that heart problems are no more confined to elite segment of the society as they are now more aware and take care of their health but in the low-income group population and less educated people, hardly anybody knows about cholesterol monitoring, high blood pressure and other risk factors for the heart disease.

In order to provide cardiac-care consultation to these patients who can’t visit cardiologists to their economic and cultural problems, Sehat Kahani has entered into an agreement with Pakistan Cardiac Society, through which female doctors would educate patients about their blood pressure monitoring, cholesterol testing and taking their history while cardiologists associated with Pakistan Cardiac Society would visit these communities regularly to provide free of charge consultation to patients, Dr. Sara informed.

“We have 25 clinics throughout the country of which, six clinics are functioning in Karachi. Through our MoU with Pakistan Cardiac Society, we are going to start heart health education at our clinics, which would later be visited by the cardiologists to provide consultation to heart patients”, she added.

President Pakistan Cardiac Society (PCS) Dr. Feroz Memon said due to awareness and lifestyle modifications, people in other parts of the world were living healthy lives and their rate of having Ischemic Heart Disease (IHD) was reducing while in Pakistan, ratio of people having heart diseases was constantly on the rise, which should be alarming for the nation as well as authorities.

“Lack of awareness among our people is a major risk factor behind causing heart diseases to our people as Pakistani children and youngsters are programmed to have heart diseases, diabetes mellitus and hypertension as compared to other ethnic groups in the world due to their genes. But due to their unhealthy lifestyle, children as young as 12 to 18 years of age are having high blood pressure and diabetes while young man in their late 20s are and early 30s are dying due to heart attacks.

Prof. Memon maintained that there is an urgent need to conduct research and collect data to find out causes and prepare preventive strategies and added that their collaboration with Sehat Kahani would yield positive results and help them in collecting valuable data as well as providing heart health consultation to marginalized segments of the society.

He said “In order to save our future generations, we have decided to promote the culture of research in the area of cardiology and in this regard, HealthRab is help in us for last three years. We hope that this research and data collected by our young researchers would help us in saving thousands of lives annually”, he added.

General Secretary of Pakistan Cardiac Society (PCS) and eminent cardiologist Prof. Ishtiaq Rasool and others also spoke on the occasion.