The Shaheed Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto Medical University’s (SMBBMU) recently appointed Vice-Chancellor (VC) Dr Aneela Attaur Rehman on Monday expressed her delight that she was the first female VC of any medical university in the Sindh province. Reportedly, she addressed a seminar organised in the Sheikh Zayed Hospital for Women (SZHW), the only woman hospital in upper Sindh, to mark the World Contraception Day 2018. She termed organising such seminars and workshops as ‘a good omen’, but asserted that it would be better if patients were invited to attend such seminars for raising awareness amongst them for prevention of certain fatal diseases in the society. She revealed that many western countries have made it mandatory for a husband to observe pain her wife suffers during delivery of her child. SZHW gynaecology and Obstetrics Unit-II department head Dr Shahida Magsi said that it should have been made mandatory for a mother to breastfeed her child for two years for ensuring a two-year gap for a second child. “In our world today, every minute: 380 women become pregnant; 190 women face an unplanned or unwanted pregnancy; 110 women experience a pregnancy related complication, 40 women have an unsafe abortion, and every minute one woman dies from complications related to pregnancy and childbirth,” she informed audience of the seminar. Later, the VC inspected the prevailing condition in the SZHW when she was accompanied by gynaecology and Obstetrics Unit-I department head Prof Rafia Baloch. She was informed that only nine nurses were appointed in the 200-bed capacity hospital, whereas 90 nurses were required. What further irked her were the issues including incomplete teaching faculty, unavailability of ventilators, shortage of paramedics and only three sanitary workers instead of 80 cleaners for maintaining cleanliness in the hospital. Furthermore, only six guards have been performing security duties, and insufficient number of guards has created a lot of problems for lady doctors who often feel insecure from unruly relatives of patients. She assured lady doctors that she would take up such issues with the concerned authorities on the priority basis. Published in Daily Times, October 9th 2018.