QUETTA – Mehwish Sharif, who is currently deployed at the tuberculosis ward of the Fatima Jinnah Chest Hospital in Balochistan, has become Pakistan’s first doctor with hearing impairment.
Dr Mehwish, who overcame years of prejudice to finish her medical school and be appointed as a doctor at the Fatima Jinnah Chest Hospital, now treats respiratory and viral diseases.
Even after she lost her hearing at age four due to sensorineural hearing loss or SNHL, she dreamt of becoming a doctor as a child. The 29-year-old doctor from a remote village in the central Balochistan district of Kachi told Arab News, “I used to act like a doctor while playing with my brothers when I was a little girl. The white coat that doctors wear and the stethoscopes always inspired me.”
Although her family supported her, Mehwish says her graduation from Bolan Medical College in 2021 came after many years of discrimination and insensitive comments from many people, including faculty members.
She says, “I found my teachers often complaining about my hearing disability. Even in my last medical exams, they did not allow me to use hearing aids since they thought they were headphones.”
She recalls how shaken she was while sitting for an exam and reading the word “disabled” written by an examiner next to her name.
In another instance of discrimination, she was required to submit a permission letter to use a hearing aid for an exam she had sat for at the Balochistan University.
She says, “I got the letter and when I went to the professor [to submit it], who was also head of department of surgery, he saw me and asked my name. I told him my name and he said ‘you can hear, you have submitted a fake letter’.”
“Even after asking me all the questions [in the viva exam], he failed me in the final,” she said.
