Muhammad Abdullah

This headline tells you whose daughter she is. It tells you nothing about the Professor. Prof. Dr. Nighat Shah should be judged on merit, qualifications, performance and JSMU/JPMC’s institutional need — not her parentage. She is FRCOG, FCPS, MRCOG, MCPS and MHPE, and returned to the public sector after around 15 years at AKUH to build and lead JPMC’s Gynae & Obstetrics Unit 9B. Look at what has been built in barely three years: • A previously vacant gynae unit developed into a major teaching and clinical department, with postgraduate and subspecialty training and international research collaboration. • 39 postgraduate doctors currently being supervised, together with their research. • Public-sector infertility and assisted-reproduction services, alongside new menopause, adolescent-health and early-assessment clinics. • A major expansion of family-planning work in tertiary hospitals through training, service development and collaboration, including Autaq, a dedicated male family-planning initiative. • Leadership in tackling maternal mortality, including collaboration with NICVD/SICVD so that pregnant women with serious cardiac disease can receive specialised multidisciplinary care. • Advocacy that helped address the absence of neonatal intensive-care capacity for critically ill newborns. And all this has been achieved in three years, with limited resources. Pakistan already has a severe shortage of highly qualified senior medical academics. Universities routinely retain exceptional professionals after retirement where their expertise, teaching and supervision remain necessary. JSMU and other public medical universities have done so in other cases as well. PMDC has specifically enabled contractual engagement of retired medical faculty up to age 65, subject to institutional need and protection of junior faculty progression. So, yes, scrutinise the appointment. Ensure due process. Ensure that no deserving junior faculty member is unfairly blocked. But retaining scarce expertise is not nepotism merely because the professional happens to have a well-known father. A family name should neither qualify nor disqualify anyone. Judge the Professor on her record, and more importantly, the need of the Institution. Respect professionals. Respect merit.