As COVID-19 puts Pakistan’s health system under stress, tens of thousands of women doctors are sitting at home, their talents squandered in a country where millions have no access to medical care, Pakistan Today reported.

Many families encourage their daughters to study medicine, not for a career, but to bolster their marriage prospects. The phenomenon even has a name — “doctor-brides”.

Appalled by the waste of expertise, entrepreneur Sara Saeed Khurram has set up a telemedicine platform enabling female medics to provide e-consultations from their homes to patients in rural communities.

“Half the population in Pakistan — 100 million people — never get to see a doctor in their lifetime,” Khurram, CEO of Sehat Kahani, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

“At the same time, we have another big challenge which is very close to my heart — more than 60 percent of our doctors are women, but most don’t work.”

Sehat Kahani is among a myriad of social enterprises — businesses seeking to build a better world — that are innovating to plug healthcare gaps in developing countries, a task given added urgency by the COVID-19 crisis.

Khurram, who has seen patient numbers increase ten-fold during the pandemic, believes her model could be replicated in other developing countries with doctor shortages.

(SAM)