Dr. Azra Ahsan Alam

Dr. Azra Ahsan is a graduate of Dow Medical College, Karachi. She has received postgraduate training in the UK and secured membership of the Royal College of Obstetricians &Gynecologists (RCOG), UK. She has since earned a Fellowship of the RCOG. She currently works as a consultant obstetrician & gynecologist in a tertiary hospital of Karachi. She has rich and varied experience, having worked in UK, North Africa, the Middle East and Pakistan. She has a keen interest in Public Health and through her work at the National Committee for Maternal and Neonatal Health (NCMNH), she has overseen and implemented many interventions on Reproductive Health, including Emergency Obstetric & Newborn Care (EmONC), Post Abortion Care (PAC) and Family Planning. She works as Vice President and Technical Consultant to NCMNH and is also the President of the Association for Mothers and Newborns (AMAN), an NGO working for Maternal and Newborn health. She is a member of the Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Pakistan (SOGP) and an honorary member of the Midwifery Association of Pakistan (MAP). She was instrumental in spearheading a project on PAC in Pakistan, in collaboration with Ipas, during which Manual vacuum Aspiration (MVA) and Misoprostol for PAC (both being WHO recommended technologies) was introduced in Pakistan for the first time. She has also led the Post Partum Family Planning (PPFP) initiative in Pakistan by initiating an intervention on Post Partum Intra Uterine Contraceptive Device (PPIUCD) and demonstrated that it is a safe and effective method for FP. She has many publications to her credit, including the EmONC manual in Urdu & English. She has been involved in reviewing the Verbal Autopsy Questionnaires during the Maternal Mortality Survey conducted by National Institute of Population Studies (NIPS). She is/has been a member of many steering committees and task forces, including the task force on population in Sindh.