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Chicken Jindan Mai fell and broke her hip, her husband, Bashir Ahmad Chaudhary, thought the challenge would get her back on her feet. But the ordeal began when she tried to find him a doctor. From his village in Yazman, Bahawalpur, he traveled far and wide in search of a female orthopedic surgeon. Bahawalpur had none, nor Multan. Unwilling to have her conservative upbringing and a male doctor examine his young wife, Bashir eventually put Jindan, their newborn baby and their savings on a bus to Lahore, some 600 kilometers away, where there was a female orthopedic surgeon at Mayo Hospital.
Stories like Jindan’s are not uncommon. For many families across Pakistan, especially in rural and conservative communities, the idea of a male doctor examining female patients is deeply distressing. “Bashir is not weird,” says Dr. Asma Akram, senior registrar in the department of orthopedic surgery at Mayo Hospital. “There are thousands of families like this. More than 70 percent prefer to have their women examined by a female surgeon. It’s not distrust—it’s tradition. When there are just no female surgeons there is a very real barrier to care.”
Dr Akram is living proof of what can be achieved when this barrier is challenged. The first woman to earn a master of surgery degree in orthopedics from the University of Health Sciences, she remembers being told often that she didn’t belong in the field. “People think orthopedics is for men. They picture heavy hammers, long hours, physical stress. They say women can’t manage it all.” “But that’s a myth. Orthopedics is about more than strength – it’s about the health, patience and will to restore people to their lives.”
His will was tested in a decade of training. After graduating from Khoja M. Safdar Medical College, Sialkot, she entered post-graduate residencies that demanded long nights and unrelenting focus: General Surgery in Sialkot; Pediatric Orthopedics at Children’s Hospital, Lahore. and Hand and Upper Limb Surgery at CMH, Lahore. Quite often, she was the only woman in the room. “Yes, it was difficult,” she admits, “but every child who stands straight after clubfoot correction, every patient who walks again after a hip replacement, reminds me why I was there.”
Pakistan must do more than prepare women doctors – it must keep them in the workforce, support their specialties and create spaces where they thrive.
The field he champions is change. Orthopedics deals with bones, joints, muscles, ligaments, tendons and spine. It is a field of structured fractures after a repeated disability, reconstruction of children’s knees, scoliosis straight, after reoperation after reoperation. It is, as Dr. Akram quotes William W. Tipton Jr., “about mobility, freedom and quality of life.” In Pakistan, where road accidents are frequent, polio survivors are still seeking care and sports injuries are on the rise, the importance of orthopedics cannot be overstated. It’s not just surgery — it’s dignity as well as dignity in lives once defined only by pain.
The numbers tell a grim story. Pakistan has produced nearly 200,000 doctors since independence, half of them women, but about 36,000 of them are not practicing. Studies show that less than 10 percent of orthopedic faculty are women. The number of practicing female orthopedic surgeons is even lower. This creates painful shortages. Women need care. Families want women to provide it. But the pipeline to develop these surgeons is tight.
Its consequences are reverberating throughout society. Families like Jandan’s spend less savings on travel and accommodation, delaying treatment until the pain becomes unbearable. In some cases, women suffer injuries or deformities rather than seek help in silence. Others live with disabilities that could have been corrected if only the right doctor was available. Behind every number is a story of lost freedom. A mother is unable to carry her child, a grandmother is unable to walk to the washroom, a girl is unable to play cricket at school.
For Dr. Asma Akram, these stories promote a mission larger than herself. She wants young women in medical colleges to see orthopedics as a calling, not a male preserve. “We need more girls to step up,” she says. “Pakistan is 50 percent women. Seventy percent of them prefer female doctors. It is millions of patients who need us. Orthopedics isn’t just about bones – it’s about hope, confidence and freedom.”
His own life is an example of balance. Apart from her profession, she is a wife and mother. She speaks 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 a growing, though still small, network of female orthopedic surgeons, many of whom she mentors informally. As an active member of the Pakistan Orthopedic Association, she advocates for training opportunities and mentoring programs tailored to the needs of women.
She jokes about the irony of her profession. “Yes, sometimes the equipment seems heavy,” she laughs, “but so are the responsibilities of motherhood. If women can raise families, run households and excel in medicine, they can certainly lift the surgical hammer.”
Her words describe a challenge not only for women doctors but also for the medical system. To meet the needs of its people, Pakistan must do more than prepare women doctors – it must keep them in the workforce, support their specialties and create spaces where they thrive. Otherwise, the gap will remain: families are denied male doctors, female patients are denied timely care and surgeons like Dr. Asma Akram are forced to shoulder the burden of a country that needs more people like her.
For Jindan Mai, the long journey to Lahore was worth it. He found a doctor he trusted, a surgeon who understood both his injury and his family’s values. For her doctor, it was another reminder of why she chose this field. It was a story that should never have happened. A story that could be rewritten, if only more women could brave the challenge.
The author is a working journalist. He may have reached Rashidali 51214@gmail.
com
