ISLAMABAD: Despite the urgent demand for qualified medical practitioners in Pakistan, a substantial number of female doctors are unemployed, even though it ranks as the world’s fifth most populous nation.
Paradoxically, this situation is unfolding in a nation where the financially limited government allocates significant funds to subsidize medical education within public sector universities, amounting to billions of rupees.
As many as 35 per cent female medical doctors are unemployed in Pakistan, revealed a research jointly conducted by Gallup Pakistan and PRIDE across the country.
Based on the Labour Force Survey 2020-21, Gallup Pakistan and PRIDE analyzed the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics data on the labor market, especially female medical graduates. It disseminated the same for the country’s wider policy circles.
Amid ongoing crises, Pakistan grapples with a severe scarcity of qualified doctors, with over 36,000 female physicians either unemployed or choosing to stay out of the workforce for diverse reasons.
Bilal Gilani, an Executive Director at Gallup Pakistan, remarked, “Pakistan faces a significant shortage of adequately trained medical practitioners.”
The survey shows that 104,974 female medical graduates reside in Pakistan. Of the total, 68,209, or 65 per cent work at private and state-owned medical facilities.
The country, however, has 15,619 or 14.9 per cent female doctors without any job, while 21,146, constituting 20.1 per cent of the total number, are completely out of labor force, the survey shows.
As per the Pakistan Medical & Dental Council (PMDC), since its establishment in 1947, Pakistan has produced approximately 200,000 doctors, with females comprising half of this medical workforce.
The data from the Bureau of Emigration show that around 30,000 doctors have left Pakistan since 1970, and on average, almost 1,000 will settle abroad yearly.
“Among females, a major issue is qualified female doctors are not working,” viewed Gilani.
Most of these doctors studied at public sector universities where the government spends billions of rupees to subsidize education.
An average private university charges medical student more than Rs 5 million, and the government one imparts the same education for less than Rs 1 million.
Hence, the government is required to provide a subsidy of at least Rs 4 million to produce a medical doctor. This allocation of taxpayers’ funds appears to be in vain, as the survey reveals that one in three of these female doctors is not actively practicing.
It said almost 50,000 female doctors on whom an investment of at least 200 billion in current value is wasted. “We need to rethink both the costs to taxpayers of these not working doctors and the loss in terms of health outcomes which their absence is causing,” observed Gilani.
Furthermore, one in five medical graduates choose not to work, according to Dr. Shahid Naeem, director of policy research at PRIDE. He said most of these ‘out of labor force’ female medical graduates are married.
Dr. Naeem suggested that the government reassess its approach to allocating seats, at least in the public sector medical colleges, to ensure value for money. “This indicates the presence of a social trend of getting medical education to secure a better spouse,” he said.
He said that the issue of female medical graduates or doctors who remain out of the labor force after completing medical education is a serious concern that warrants further exploration.
The survey’s results confirm the ‘doctor brides’ phenomenon that has been frequently discussed and covered in Pakistani society, and they also show that many families want their daughters to pursue medical degrees since it makes it easier for them to find a more compatible spouse.
The survey also addresses the regional breakup of the employment pattern of these doctors and found that about 28 per cent and 72 per cent of Pakistan’s total medical graduates reside in rural and urban areas, respectively.
In the rural region, 52 per cent or more than half of Pakistan’s medical graduates are employed, and 31 per cent are jobless.
The proportion of medical graduates who prefer to remain out of the labor force in rural areas stands lower, 17 per cent, than the national average of 20 per cent. A close analysis of the data from urban centers reveals that about 70 per cent of the medical graduates were employed while less than 9 per cent were unemployed.
The proportion of medical graduates who choose to remain out of labor force in Pakistan’s urban areas is more than 21 per cent.
The region-wise comparison shows that employment opportunities for female graduates are significantly higher, 78 per cent, in urban areas compared to 22 per cent in rural areas. Conversely, the proportion of the jobless is significantly higher in rural areas, 57 per cent, compared to 43 per cent in cities, according to the survey.
A significant disparity emerges when analyzing the regional distribution of the 21,146 female medical graduates who have chosen to abstain from the labor force. Their representation is notably higher in urban areas, accounting for 76.6 per cent, while in rural regions, their presence is comparatively lower at 23.4 per cent.
It is pertinent to mention that around 76 per cent of those medical graduates who opted to remain out of labor force were married. By age group, the most frequent occurrence of female medical graduates (54 per cent) belongs to the 25-34 years of age.
“The data analysis underlines the importance of targeted policy efforts to improve employment opportunities for medical graduates, especially in rural areas where unemployment rates are higher,” concluded the survey.
The female medical graduates surveyed include persons who had passed the MBBS, BDS, MS/M.Sc., M.Phil., or Ph.D. degrees in any field of medicine.
This survey provided Pakistan’s first district-level representative results, gathering information from around 99,900 households.
