Source: BBC
In Pakistan’s prestigious medical schools, female students outshine and outnumber their male counterparts. However, many do not end up as practising doctors – and now there are calls to limit their numbers, the BBC’s Amber Shamsi in Islamabad reports.
Twenty fourth-year medical students are learning how to examine a patient with a throat infection. Today’s lesson is as much about patient care as it is the anatomy of the throat.
The patient is real, a woman, and the instructor invites several of the female students to examine her, since cultural sensitivities dictate that she does not want to be inspected by a man. The instructor has his pick, since there are 17 women and three men in this group of students.
It is almost as if men are an endangered species in Pakistan’s medical colleges.
Comment sent by Dr Shumaila Khan from Toronto:
In my opinion as a human being both have the same rights for education. I have hardly seen a doctor woman sitting for all of their life at home in Pakistan. It is when they move to foreign country, that they are denied, face lot more challenges.