From Kabul to Canada, Dr. Nasrin Oryakhil has dedicated her life to defending the rights of Afghan women and girls. A gynecologist and obstetrician, she provided critical care to women’s health through years of war, political upheaval and threats to her safety. Now, she supports the cause from Canada as a Douglas College alum.
How the power of hope carried an Afghan women’s doctor through war, exile and education
By Aline Bouwman, Marketing and Communications
“Hope is an act of resistance. I always have hope,” Dr. Nasrin Oryakhil says. “If you lose your hope, it means you have lost your life.”
From Kabul to Canada, Dr. Nasrin Oryakhil has dedicated her life to defending the rights of Afghan women and girls. A gynecologist and obstetrician – and recent Douglas College grad – she provided critical care to women’s health through years of war, political upheaval and threats to her safety in Afghanistan.
When Nasrin began medical school in Kabul in the 1970s, women filled more seats in her classes than men. Education was not only accessible to women, it was encouraged. Now, decades later, Afghan girls and women are barred from education beyond elementary school. They are forbidden from leaving their homes without a male chaperone and prohibited from seeking medical care from male doctors.
Nasrin has lived through this reversal. She has also spent her life pushing back against it.
Becoming a doctor
From a young age, Nasrin knew she wanted to become a physician specializing in gynecology and obstetrics. Growing up as one of two daughters in her family, she was acutely aware of the social stigma attached to families without sons. Rather than accept it, she resolved to challenge it.
She enrolled in medical school and went on to build a career that made her a pillar of Afghanistan’s medical community.
But the work was never easy. Political instability, shortages of medical supplies and increasing threats to her safety as a woman doctor were her constant reality.
Nevertheless, Nasrin committed to providing the best possible patient care.
During the Afghan Civil War (1978 – 1996), Nasrin once treated a patient with a uterine rupture in critical condition when the hospital’s blood bank was empty due to wartime casualties. Without hesitation, she donated 500 ml of her own blood. After a brief recovery period, she returned to the operating room that same night and saved the patient’s life.
Later, under the first Taliban regime (1996-2001), her work became even more dangerous.
With increasing restrictions on women’s work and travel out of their homes independently, her ability to work as a doctor was compromised. She recalls a night when members of the Taliban entered her clinic and demanded she go to the mosque immediately, despite there being no service for women at that time. When Nasrin tried to reason with them, several men physically assaulted her, causing permanent injuries to her neck.
That same night, Nasrin went on to perform 17 successful surgeries.
“As a doctor, I have a responsibility to my patients. Violence and threats can’t change that,” Nasrin says. “If we want change in Afghanistan, the people have to know their mission and responsibility. It starts with us and our responsibility to one another, especially women for women.”
With limited reproductive health education and family planning options throughout the country, Afghanistan has a very high birth rate and elevated rate of maternal complications.
In 2005, Nasrin became director of the Malalai Maternity Hospital, where she herself was born in 1964. Malalai Maternity is the busiest hospital in Kabul, delivering approximately 85 babies per day.
Nasrin contributed to numerous other advancements in women’s health, opening the first clinic for obstetric fistula repair in the country and founding the Medical Council of Afghanistan. She also served as president for the not-for-profit Afghan Family Guidance Organization, which provides crucial services to women and girls, including reproductive health programs and shelters for women experiencing domestic violence.
Dr. Nasrin Oryakhil receives the 2014 International Women of Courage Award from former First Lady Michelle Obama
As of now, the Taliban has systematically erased much of the progress in women’s health that Nasrin worked to achieve. The Afghan Family Guidance Organization’s school programs have been banned, and all 26 women’s shelters across Afghanistan are closed.
“Before the second rise of the Taliban regime, we educated more than 10,000 adolescent girls about their reproductive health, menstrual hygiene and bodily autonomy,” Nasrin says. “We were flooded with requests from schools across the country. All that work is now lost.”
Still, Nasrin maintains hope for the future of Afghan women.
“Hope is an act of resistance. I always have hope,” she says. “If you lose your hope, it means you have lost your life.”
Nasrin was forced to flee her country when the second Taliban regime rose to power in 2021. She and her family spent several years in political asylum, uncertain where they might find a long-term home before managing to immigrate to Canada as refugees.
Although she was nearly 60 years old and the mother of four adult daughters, Nasrin says that going back to school made her feel young again.
“Some of my classmates had only just graduated high school, but I fit right in,” she says. “I felt 16 again! Your mind stays young as long as you are invested in learning and growing in your education.”
The ELLA instructors helped Nasrin settle into the Canadian academic system and acquire a strong grasp of formal and professional English over the course of the short program. After completing the program, Nasrin immediately explored pathways to put her medical skills into action in the Canadian workforce as a medical sonographer.
She remembers her time at Douglas fondly, and from time to time still helps one of her daughters – now also enrolled at the College – navigate the online learning platform used in many courses.
“Education is a privilege and a source of hope,” Nasrin says. “Education and hope are the foundation for all personal and societal development. The Taliban knows this. It’s why women are cut off from education in Afghanistan. I have four daughters, so I will never give up on education.”
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