Female Doctors & The Eternal Muslim Plea...

Having worked in the health care system in an immigrant dominated suburb in Stockholm, one picks up on a lot of things going on with people behind closed doors and text book replies.

One of the main issues for patients visiting a doctor has been the lack of female doctors to meet the huge demands of a large immigrant population, some perhaps not used to going to a doctor of the opposite gender.

In the suburb in question, Wahabi inspired Islam seems to be spreading more and more. The influx of Somali refugees, many (but of course not all) of them having lived in Saudi Arabia, has affected the spirit in this particular suburb. Seeing women in Niqab on a daily basis is nothing strange here. I must add though, most of these women don't work and it doesn't seem like it's part of any future plans.

To become a doctor, all of you surely know, hard work is needed. Night shifts and working in environments with men and women, female and male patients.

These women (with the encouraging tune of their husbands) who for religiously claimed reasons won't see a male doctor even if it has to do with examining a throat, are no where to be found in medical schools or nursing schools but rather make themselves scarce when the subject is brought up and it is not uncommon to get the reply:

"It's not islamic for a woman to stay away all night
(referring to night shifts), or to examine male patients."

But a female doctor, they must have.

From Stockholm to Yemen. In Tarim, an area near Hadramout, there are no female doctors to be found, at all. Well, apart from the imported female Russian doctors. But no woman will go, or rather, no husband or father will allow them to visit a male doctor. So I ask myself: from where are these female doctors supposed to rain down on us?