Doctors Against All Odds

From remote villages to makeshift clinics, these healthcare workers show what it means to serve when no one is watching.

- Mohammad Hanief

When Dr. Shabir Ahmad's phone rings at midnight, he doesn't wait to check if it's an emergency. He pulls on a worn jacket, grabs his old medical bag, and steps into the darkness.

Sometimes it's a heart attack, sometimes a baby on the way, and sometimes, just a neighbour too poor or too frightened to go to the hospital alone.

It has been like this for years in his corner of South Kashmir, a place where the nearest specialist is two hours away, and power cuts are so frequent that surgeries are often done under phone flashlights.

This isn't unusual. Across the Kashmir Valley, doctors have become more than just health workers. They are drivers, educators, mental health counselors, and life-lines. Their work begins long before their hospital shift and rarely ends with it. Even on days off, they respond to knocks on their doors and messages on their phones, answering not just medical queries but the unspoken expectation that they'll always be available.

"You can't say no," said Dr. Shabir, shrugging, as if the decision was obvious. "People trust you with their lives."

In urban Srinagar, where private hospitals hum with machines and staff, long hours and complex surgeries are part of the routine. But it's in Kashmir's rural belt—from Kupwara's high-altitude hamlets to the far ends of Kulgam—that the grit of the medical profession is most visible.

Doctors often travel miles on foot, cross rivers in makeshift boats, and wade through snow just to attend to patients who've never seen the inside of a hospital.

"I remember once being called to deliver a baby in a house with no electricity and no water," said Dr. Asma Jan, who serves in a government-run Primary Health Centre in Bandipora. "The only light we had was from a lantern. We used boiled water and cotton cloths. I didn't even think of fear. There was no time for that."