‘Doctor-brides’ to apps: Pakistani, Indian entrepreneurs find ways to plug coronavirus health gaps

Sehat Kahani enables Pakistan’s female doctors, who are discouraged from working after marriage, to provide e-consultations from their homes to patients in rural areas

In India, Virohan trains young people on low incomes in dozens of paramedical roles from lab technicians to operating theatre assistants

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A health worker adjusts the oxygen mask of a patient at the BKC jumbo field hospital in Mumbai, India. Photo: AP

Published: 7:03pm, 20 May 2021Updated: 7:06pm, 20 May 2021

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

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 doctors 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, said.

“At the same time we have another big challenge which is very close to my heart – more than 60 per cent 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 health care gaps in developing countries, a task given added urgency by the Covid-19 crisis.