Dr. Tasneem Ahsan: A Pakistani doctor who started an OPD from a room and was awarded the American Laureate Award
To set up Pakistan’s first public sector endocrinology department, the OPD was first started in a small room at Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Center Karachi. Then set up the department in the ruined barracks. Funds were collected for the construction of the building of this department.
This is what Dr. Tasneem Ahsan has to say, who was recently awarded the Laureate Award by the Endocrine Society of America for her outstanding services. She is the first Pakistani to receive this honor.
The Endocrine Society awards this prize annually for exceptional service in the field.
Prof. Dr. Tasneem Ahsan retired from Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Center in Karachi in 2015, and the institution gave her the title of Professor Emerita, meaning a professor whose services are always taken advantage of, for her outstanding performance in the field of education, research and medicine. will
First female endocrinologist
Prof. Dr. Tasneem Ahsan graduated in medicine from Dow Medical College and did a house job in Karachi.
She recalls that after marriage I went to UK with my husband Dr. Shakeel Ahmed Rizvi where I received training in endocrinology. When I had to come to Pakistan for some work, I got an opportunity to work in Civil Hospital Karachi.
On my husband’s advice, I decided to stay in Pakistan. It was always our decision to get training abroad and render services in our own country.
According to him, it was a new field in which experience was important rather than examination. This field was just beginning. There were already experts in it. The founders of any field are called grandfathers or grandmothers. Grandfather and mother do the initial work for him. That early work remains useful for modern and future research. The same thing happened in endocrinology.
Regarding endocrinology, he says that this field deals with hormones and chronic diseases, i.e. diseases that cannot be cured, such as diabetes.
“Once diabetes occurs, it cannot be cured, but it can be controlled and the damage caused by it can be minimized so that the patient does not suffer from many problems in his life.”
Professor Dr. Tasneem Ahsan says that for this we keep the patient’s data safe. This data spans years. Take the example of sugar, when we try to estimate from the patient’s sugar that there is no damage to any part of his body and try to control this damage.
First OPD in small room When he started it at Jinnah Hospital, all these facilities were not available there.
Professor Dr. Tasneem Ahsan recalls that ‘at that time there was no concept of endocrinology in Pakistan in the government sector. She was the only endocrinologist in the public sector of Pakistan.
While working in the field of medicine, he tried to somehow start the field of endocrinology.
He said that the then director allowed me to start an OPD in a small room. We had no such facilities. The patients themselves did not keep any records while I started keeping records in the clinic.
