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A Brief Background
Ours is a male dominant society where only very few females enjoy full rights and have access to opportunities of even very basic human needs. This is even more true in the health sector, where unfortunately there is a great lack of female doctors combined with a large number of female 'quacks' in the country and the situation is at its worst in Shamsabad where there is only one or two qualified female doctors. The female doctors are neither easily available nor easily affordable and women do not prefer to be examined by male doctors.
There are a lot of government hospitals which provide free or low fee treatment to women but those are not preferred because of:
- The casual and offhand behaviour of doctors
- More than one male doctor examining the patient at one
time
- The fear of crowds of medical students present at time of
examination
- The fear that doctor may misuse this opportunity for some
evil deed
Right from the beginning of my career, I have had very strong intentions
to organize the primary health care system in my area and to make my
clinic a model for others. Towards this end, I was very fortunate
because I became involved with two very useful people, Dr Christopher
Rose, PhD, Ex. Executive Director, Action in International Medicine
(AIM) , London,UK and Dr Barry H. Smith, MD, PhD, Director of Dreyfus
Health Foundation ( DHF ) , New York, USA. The two organizations were
jointly operating a very famous Programme called CCI-Programme.
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CCI Programme Training Workshop
Dr Rose visited Pakistan twice, in 1998 and 1999, at my request. We had identified the Top Ten Health Problems of Shamsabad List during his last visit. Women's health problems were on the top of the list. (The term Women's Health Problems is strictly used to indicate only those health problems, which are specific to women).
Dr Christopher and I had decided to address these problems through the CCI-Approach, but this was not possible due to lack of funds because of the collapse of AIM. We did not receive any funds, from any organization.
I was left with three choices:
a) Continue searching for the funds from other sources
b) Quit the mission
c) Continue the mission with my own personal resources at a very small
scale through my clinic.
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