35pc lady doctors jobless or not practising: survey

LAHORE: A whopping 35 percent of female doctors in Pakistan are either jobless or not practicing at will, which is a waste of billions of taxpayers' money going in subsidy on their education at public sector institutions, revealed a Gallup Pakistan survey.

This puts the people of Pakistan in a double whammy as it costs taxpayers heavily on one hand, and inflicts a huge loss in terms of health outcomes on the other. While Pakistan being the world's 5th most populous country badly needs qualified medical practitioners, resource-constrained governments, ironically, are spending billions of rupees on subsidizing medical education in public sector universities to produce female doctors only to inflict a loss on the country. This survey, jointly conducted by Gallup Pakistan and PRIDE, collected data from close to 99,900 households across Pakistan and produced district level representative results for the first time. The female medical graduates surveyed include persons who had MBBS, BDS, MS/M.Sc., M.Phil or Ph.D. degrees in any field of medicine. Basing their research on the Labour Force Survey 2020-21, research scientists analyzed Pakistan Bureau of Statistics’ data on labour market especially female medical graduates and disseminated it to the country’s wider policy circles. While the crises-hit country is facing a serious shortage of qualified doctors, more than 36,000 female doctors are either jobless or opted to remain out of the labor force for various reasons. "Pakistan has a dearth of trained medical doctors," said Bilal Gilani, executive director at Gallup Pakistan.

The survey shows that there 104,974 female medical graduates in Pakistan. Of the total, 68,209 or 65% are working at various private and state-owned medical facilities. The country, however, has 15,619 or 14.9% female doctors without any job while 21,146, constituting 20.1% of the total number, are completely out of the labour force, the survey shows. According to the Pakistan Medical & Dental Council (PMDC), since its inception in 1947 Pakistan has produced about 200,000 doctors, half of them being females. The data from the Bureau of Emigration shows that around 30,000 doctors have left Pakistan since 1970 and on average almost 1,000 are going to settle abroad every year. "Among females, a major issue is qualified female doctors are not working," viewed Gilani.

A majority of these doctors studied at public sector universities where the government spends billions of rupees to subsidize education. An average private university charges medical students more than Rs 5 million and a government institution imparts the education for less than Rs1 million. Thus, the government has to give at least a Rs 4 million subsidy to produce a medical doctor. This taxpayers' money goes to waste as one in three of these female doctors are not working, the survey shows. "Almost 50,000 female doctors on whom an investment of at least Rs200 billion in current value is wasted," reveals the survey. "We need to rethink about both, the costs to taxpayers of these not working doctors and also the loss in terms of health outcomes which their absence is causing,” observed Gilani.

Further, Dr. Shahid Naeem, director policy research at PRIDE, said one in every five medical graduates opt to remain out of the labour force. The majority of these ‘out of labour force’ female medical graduates are married, he said. “This is indicative of the presence of a social trend of getting medical education in order to secure a better spouse,” Dr. Naeem opined urging the government to review its policy of allocation of seats at least in the public sector medical colleges to ensure value for money. The issue of female medical graduates or doctors who remain out of the labour force after completing medical education is a serious concern that warrants further exploration, he said.

The findings of this survey support the phenomenon of ‘doctor brides’ as widely discussed and reported in Pakistan’s context and stipulates that many families prefer their daughters to have medical education, as it enables them to find a more suitable match for their marriage. The survey also addresses the regional breakdown of the employment pattern of these doctors and found that about 28% and 72% of Pakistan's total medical graduates live in rural and urban areas, respectively. In the rural region, 52% or more than half of Pakistan's medical graduates are employed and 31% are jobless. The proportion of the medical graduates who prefer to remain out of the labour force in rural areas stands lower, 17%, than the national average of 20%. A close analysis of the data from urban centers reveals that about 70% of the medical graduates were employed while less than 9% were unemployed. The proportion of the medical graduates who choose to remain out of the labour force in Pakistan's urban areas is more than 21%. The region-wise comparison shows that employment opportunities for the female graduates are significantly higher, 78%, in urban areas as compared to 22% in rural areas. Conversely, the proportion of the jobless is significantly higher in rural areas, 57%, compared to 43% in cities, according to the survey. When we look at the breakdown, by region, of 21,146 female medical graduates who opted to remain out of the labour force, it is found that their share in cities stands much higher at 76.6% compared to their 23.4% share in rural areas. Around 76% of those medical graduates who opted to remain out of the labour force were married. By age group, the most frequent occurrence of female medical graduates (54%) belong to the 25-34 years of age. "The analysis of the data underlines the importance of targeted policy efforts to improve employment opportunities for medical graduates, especially in rural areas where unemployment rates are higher," concluded the survey.