Sehat Kahani
AR Why did you found Sehat Kahani?
SSK It evolved around two major health issues. The first is very connected to my and Iffat’s lives – the issue of doctors’ rights. Pakistan has a total medical workforce of 170,000 doctors. Female doctors make up around 60 to 70 per cent of the total medical workforce, which is a great thing, but, unfortunately, only 23 per cent of them are currently registered with the Pakistan Medical & Dental Council and work, which means that 70,000 to 80,000 doctors are missing from Pakistan’s health ecosystem.
This happens because of what we call ‘doctor brides’, in that parents in our country want their daughters to become doctors, not for them to serve communities as physicians, but for them to have better hands in marriage. If you’re a woman in Pakistan, if you’re a doctor, if you’re tall, if you’re thin, if you’re pretty, you make the perfect package for an arranged marriage.
The second problem is very close to our hearts – the inaccessibility of healthcare in this country. Over half the population don’t have access to the help of qualified doctors and go to quacks, faith healers or midwives and nurses instead. While there are a lot of problems in the healthcare infrastructure, we believe that the inability of our medical workforce to work to its
