Pakistan is the 3rd Largest Source of Foreign Doctors in America

[Riaz Haq]

Pakistan is the third biggest source of foreign doctors who make up a third of all practicing physicians in the United States, according to OECD. Vast majority of Muslim doctors in America are of Pakistani origin.

Foreign Doctors in America:

About 30% of the 800,000 doctors, or about 240,000 doctors, currently practicing in America are of foreign origin, according to Catholic Health Association of the United States. Predictions vary, but according to the American Association of Medical Colleges, by 2025 the U.S. will be short about 160,000 physicians. This gap will most likely be filled by more foreign doctors.

Foreign Doctors in US, UK. Source: OECD

Pakistani Doctors in United States:

As of 2013, there are over 12,000 Pakistani doctors, or about 5% of all foreign physicians and surgeons, in practice in the United States.  Pakistan is the third largest source of foreign-trained doctors. India tops with 22%, or 52,800 doctors. It is followed by the Philippines with 6%, or 14,400 foreign-trained doctors. India and Pakistan also rank as the top two sources of foreign doctors in the United Kingdom.

Dow University of Health Sciences, Karachi, Pakistan

Dow Medical University of Health Sciences:

There are 3,100 graduates of Karachi's Dow University of Health Sciences, contributing the largest pool of doctors among the 12,000 Pakistani doctors in the United States. About 1,900 are from Lahore's King Edward Medical College and the rest from Karachi's Agha Khan University, Lahore's Allama Iqbal Medical College and other medical colleges in Pakistan, according to Dr. Humayun Chaudhry, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Federation of State Medical Boards in the United States.

Doctor Shortages:

India has six doctors for 10,000 people and Pakistan has eight. The comparable figure for the United States is 25 doctors per 10,000. And yet, the United States continues to import thousands of doctors from these two South Asian nations. Predictions vary, but according to the American Association of Medical Colleges, by 2025 the U.S. will be short about 160,000 physicians. This shortfall will most likely be filled by foreign doctors from countries like India and Pakistan.

Summary:

Pakistani doctors make up the third largest source of practicing physicians and surgeons in the United States. And more are coming to make up the continuing shortages in spite of the fact that Pakistan has only eight doctors per 10,000 people, only a third of the 25 doctors per 10,000 in the United States. Will this change after President-elect Donald Trump takes office on January 20, 2017? Only time will tell.

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[Riaz Haq]

St. Louis County Health Director Dr. Faisal Khan, a Pakistani American, was subjected to racial abuse at a St. Louis County Council meeting, according to multiple media reports. He apparently got caught up in the middle of a fierce, angry debate on new mask mandates amid surging infections attributed to the Delta variant of the COVID19 virus that originated in India. The anti-mask crowd is particularly strong in Republican states that voted for former President Donald J. Trump.

https://www.riazhaq.com/2021/07/racial-slurs-hurled-at-pakistani.html

[Riaz Haq]

Excerpts of "Our Man", biography of late Richard Holbrooke, President Obama's Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan (SRAP), by George Packer

Holbrooke died in December 13,2010 after his aorta ruptured.

His emergency heart surgery was performed by Dr. Farzad Najam, a Pakistani-American heart surgeon at George Washington Hospital in Washington DC.

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Hillary Clinton’s doctor, Jehan El-Bayoumi, worked at George Washington and heard from a Clinton aide that an important person was coming their way. A young cardiologist named Monica Mukherjee met the ambulance at the doors and led the gurney through the emergency room to radiology.

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Mukherjee called the hospital’s chief cardiac surgeon, who was fifteen minutes away. “You need to come right now. It’s a VIP.” “Who is it?” “His name is (Richard) Holbrooke.” He was wheeled into the triage trauma bay and a curtain was drawn around the gurney. Feldman was on his left side, holding his hand, and LaVine was at the foot of the bed. Mukherjee was trying to get a catheter into his right wrist to monitor blood pressure, but he was in such turmoil that she couldn’t do it. His skin was cold and clammy and he looked as if he was about to pass out, but Mukherjee was struck by how he dominated the room—not just his size but his sheer presence, the light in his ice-blue eyes.

--------------------

They wheeled him to the elevator and took him up to the second floor. He kept instructing Feldman. “Tell Mort Janklow. No, wait till the operation is over, and don’t release a press statement till it’s over.” In the intensive care unit the surgeon introduced himself. “Mr. Holbrooke, I am Dr. Farzad Najam, the cardiac surgeon here.” “Any Indian-American doctor is okay with me,” Holbrooke said. Still putting on. Najam and Mukherjee exchanged a look. Najam was a Pakistani American, from Lahore. He knew about Holbrooke’s work. “Just tell me it’s going to be okay.” “Mr. Holbrooke, you have an acute aortic dissection—the aorta has ripped. It’s a surgical emergency and we need to take you to the operating room.” Najam would have to cut through the breastbone, put him on a bypass pump, and replace the aorta and perhaps the valve.


Packer, George. Our Man . Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

January 10, 2022 at 8:21 PM

 

 Riaz Haq said...

Pakistani-American heart surgeon Dr. Mohammad Mohiuddin and Dr. Bartley Griffith performed the first successful genetically-modified pig heart transplant into a human patient today at University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM) hospital in Baltimore, according to the University's press release. Considered one of the world’s foremost experts on transplanting animal organs, known as xenotransplantation, Muhammad M. Mohiuddin, MD, Professor of Surgery at UMSOM, joined the UMSOM faculty five years ago and established the Cardiac Xenotransplantation Program with Dr. Griffith. Dr. Mohiuddin serves as the program’s Scientific/Program Director and Dr. Griffith as its Clinical Director.

https://www.riazhaq.com/2022/01/pakistani-american-surgeontransplan...

[Riaz Haq]

The following article from the Journal of American Medical Association (JAMA) says there are 14,352 Pakistan-i-American doctors of in America.


https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2767883

Prevalence of International Medical Graduates From Muslim-Majority Nations in the US Physician Workforce From 2009 to 2019

John R. Boulet, PhD; Robbert J. Duvivier, MD, PhD; William W. Pinsky, MD


Of 1 065 606 physicians in the American Medical Association Physician Masterfile, 263 029 (24.7%) were IMGs, of whom 48 354 were citizens of Muslim-majority countries at time of entry to medical school, representing 18.4% of all IMGs. Overall, 1 in 22 physicians in the US was an IMG from a Muslim-majority nation, representing 4.5% of the total US physician workforce. More than half of IMGs from Muslim-majority nations (24 491 [50.6%]) come from 3 countries: Pakistan (14 352 [29.7%]), Iran (5288 [10.9%]), and Egypt (4851 [10.0%]). The most prevalent specialties include internal medicine (10 934 [23.6%]), family medicine (3430 [7.5%]), pediatrics (2767 [5.9%]), and psychiatry (2251 [4.8%]), with 18 229 (38.1%) practicing in primary care specialties. The number of applicants for Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates certification from Muslim-majority countries increased from 2009 (3227 applicants) to 2015 (4244 applicants), then decreased by 2.1% in 2016 to 4254 applicants, 4.3% in 2017 to 4073 applicants, and 11.5% in 2018 to 3604 applicants. Much of this decrease could be attributed to fewer citizens from Pakistan (1042 applicants in 2015 to 919 applicants in 2018), Egypt (493 applicants in 2015 to 309 applicants in 2018), Iran (281 applicants in 2015 to 182 applicants in 2018), and Saudi Arabia (337 applicants in 2015 to 163 applicants in 2018) applying for certification.

[Riaz Haq]

Farha Abbasi earns national recognition for work on minority mental health | MSUToday | Michigan State University


https://com.msu.edu/news_overview/news/2023/march/dr-farha-abbasi-e...

The first conference was conceived in the post-9/11 era, a time when Islamophobia, antisemitism and racism were “rampant and on the rise,” said Abbasi, who was born in Pakistan. For an academic institution, such as MSU, to believe in this notion and tend to the mental health needs of underrepresented and attacked groups like Muslims was a “phenomenal feat.”

Mental health is a privilege in many developing countries, she said, and MSU has the knowledge, resources and compassion to make a profound impact globally. “I am very grateful for the immense support I have received at the department, college and university levels.”

MSU has become a leading name in the field of Muslim mental health and Abbasi hopes to build upon those efforts. She, along with a group of psychiatrists of Pakistani origin, recently met with the president of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan to support mental health infrastructure, inclusive health policies and the decriminalization of suicide in the country. Abbasi also has worked in a variety of other nations, including Indonesia, Jordan, Malaysia and Turkey to provide first aid mental health training, capacity-building projects and more. She hopes to work with the MSU Institute of Global Health to continue integrating mental health into the global health curriculum.

[Riaz Haq]

As of 2016, there were 12,454 Pakistani doctors and 45,830 Indian doctors out of 215,630 total in the United States.


https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?QueryId=68336

India 45,830

Pakistan 12,454

Grenada 10,789

Philipines 10,217

Dominica 9,974

Mexico 9,923

Canada 7,765

Dominican Republic 6,269

China 5,772

UAE 4,635

Egypt 4,379

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Total Foreign Doctors in UK 66,211

India 18,953

Pakistan 8,026

Nigeria 4,880

Egypt 4,471

Foreign Doctors in Canada 25,400:

South Africa 2,604

India 2,127

Ireland 1,942

UK 1,923


US 1,263


Pakistan 1,087

[Riaz Haq]

Dr. Monica Mukherjee (Indian) and Dr. Farzad Najam (Pakistani) doctors did emergency surgery on Richard Holbrooke (Obama's Special Rep for Afghanistan and Pakistan) at George Washington University Hospital in Washington DC. Here's an except from George Packer's biography of Holbrooke:

Hillary Clinton’s doctor, Jehan El-Bayoumi, worked at George Washington and heard from a Clinton aide that an important person was coming their way. A young cardiologist named Monica Mukherjee met the ambulance at the doors and led the gurney through the emergency room to radiology. Holbrooke was screaming in pain. Mukherjee tried to settle him down for the CT scan. She could already tell that his aorta had torn. She didn’t know who he was but he seemed gigantic to her, much too long for the gurney. His enormous feet almost fell off the end. No blood was reaching those feet and their distress was now extreme. Feldman stepped away to call the doctors in New York.

“Where’s Dan,” Holbrooke demanded, “where’s Dan?” “You have to calm down,” Mukherjee told him. The scan showed a Type A aortic dissection, meaning straight to surgery. In the secretary of state’s office the force of his heart pounding blood under immense pressure through the stressed and weakened aneurysm had torn a hole in the aorta’s inner layer, and as blood streamed between the layers the torn flaps blocked the flow to the spinal arteries, and his lower half was cut off.

Mukherjee called the hospital’s chief cardiac surgeon (Dr. Farzad Najam), who was fifteen minutes away. “You need to come right now. It’s a VIP.” “Who is it?” “His name is Holbrooke.” He was wheeled into the triage trauma bay and a curtain was drawn around the gurney. Feldman was on his left side, holding his hand, and LaVine was at the foot of the bed. Mukherjee was trying to get a catheter into his right wrist to monitor blood pressure, but he was in such turmoil that she couldn’t do it. His skin was cold and clammy and he looked as if he was about to pass out, but Mukherjee was struck by how he dominated the room—not just his size but his sheer presence, the light in his ice-blue eyes. She was still struggling with the IV. “This may hurt.”

---
He closed his eyes. “I hate the beach.” “Okay, what do you like?” He opened them and looked at Mukherjee. “I like beautiful women.” Mukherjee was getting a little annoyed. El-Bayoumi told him again to relax. “I can’t relax. I’m in charge of Afghanistan and Pakistan.” “And Iraq?” “No, I don’t care about Iraq. I’m trying to bring peace to Afghanistan.” “Just relax,” El-Bayoumi said. “Let me worry about Afghanistan.” “Fine. You end the war.” He was handed consent forms to sign but was in too much pain to read them. “I have a problem with the second clause,” he said, putting on. He signed.

They wheeled him to the elevator and took him up to the second floor. He kept instructing Feldman. “Tell Mort Janklow. No, wait till the operation is over, and don’t release a press statement till it’s over.” In the intensive care unit the surgeon introduced himself. “Mr. Holbrooke, I am Dr. Farzad Najam, the cardiac surgeon here.” “Any Indian-American doctor is okay with me,” Holbrooke said. Still putting on. Najam and Mukherjee exchanged a look. Najam was a Pakistani American, from Lahore. He knew about Holbrooke’s work. “Just tell me it’s going to be okay.” “Mr. Holbrooke, you have an acute aortic dissection—the aorta has ripped. It’s a surgical emergency and we need to take you to the operating room.” Najam would have to cut through the breastbone, put him on a bypass pump, and replace the aorta and perhaps the valve.

Packer, George. Our Man . Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

[Riaz Haq]

Latest US Census Data Released in 2023

https://data.census.gov/table/ACSSPP1Y2022.S0201?q=S0201:+Selected+...

Pakistani-Americans Median Household Earning: $106,281, Mean Earnings: $149,178

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White Americans: Median household Income $78,636 Mean Earnings $112,415

African Americans : $52,238 $76,888

American Indian Alaska Native $61,778 $85,838

Asian Indian $152,341 $197,732

Bangladeshi $80,288 $116,500

Chinese $101,738 $160,049

Taiwanese $122,952 $180,906

Filipino $109,090 $122,635

Pakistanis $106,286 $149,178

Nepal $92,262 $120,146

Asians $104,646 $149,363

[Riaz Haq]

Diaspora's role in promoting health care in Pakistan

https://tribune.com.pk/story/2501083/diasporas-role-in-promoting-he...

Shahid Javed Burki

Physicians of Pakistani origin living and working in the United States constitute an important part of their country's diaspora. The size of the Pakistani diaspora is now estimated at 700,000 or 0.2 per cent of the American population. Those who have moved to the United States account for 0.3 per cent of the Pakistani population. As I will take up later in this article, I and one Pakistani doctor have played active roles in getting the diaspora involved in the affairs of their country. While I established an institution based in Lahore that is now named after me, Dr Nasim Ashraf developed a close relationship with General Pervez Musharraf who gave him a position as a member of his cabinet.

Nasim Ashraf has recently self-published a book that provides a detailed account of the way Pakistani physicians under his leadership began to work together under an effective organisation called AAPNA. The acronym stands for the Association of Physicians of Pakistani descent in North America. Ashraf's book is appropriately titled Ringside, since it provides a view of the political ring that he watched from the sidelines in Pakistan. The book focuses on the role the Pakistani physicians have played in helping the country of their origin to improve the situation of health which has caused economists such as myself to worry how the country's poor performance in the sector of health is likely to affect its economic, social and political progress.

Nasim Ashraf has recently self-published a book that provides a detailed account of the way Pakistani physicians under his leadership began to work together under an effective organisation called AAPNA. The acronym stands for the Association of Physicians of Pakistani descent in North America. Ashraf's book is appropriately titled Ringside, since it provides a view of the political ring that he watched from the sidelines in Pakistan. The book focuses on the role the Pakistani physicians have played in helping the country of their origin to improve the situation of health which has caused economists such as myself to worry how the country's poor performance in the sector of health is likely to affect its economic, social and political progress.

Pakistan's health system as redesigned by the 18th Amendment to the Constitution has passed on the responsibility of providing healthcare of the citizens to the provincial governments. They have not been effective in performing this role. There are a number of problems with the system. Of these, four are important: lack of finance; deep differences in coverage provided in the urban and rural areas; not enough focus on child- and mother-care; and a serious shortage of paramedics, nurses in particular. Taking the last first.

A paramedic is a healthcare professional whose main role has been to respond to emergency calls for medical help. Following the response, the affected person is transferred to a well-established medical facility such as hospitals and clinics. This system was put to test during the Covid crisis when Pakistan performed better than neighbouring India in part because the pandemic there struck difficult-to-reach slums in the highly population-dense city of Mumbai. Pakistan has only 106,000 nurses to serve a population now estimated at 240 million. As discussed below, the Burki Institute of Public Policy (BIPP) has launched a programme to increase the number of paramedics in the country, in particular in the areas around the megacity of Lahore.