Iraq Adds First Female Officer to Army’s Medical Corps
BAGHDAD, Iraq – The Iraqi army added its first female medical officer, here, recently, as part of the government’s continuing effort to fully integrate both genders into its armed forces.
The officer, a dentist assigned to the Iraqi Armed Forces’ Surgeon General’s office as a staff officer, will complete three months of advanced training at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Mass., prior to service in Iraq.
Recruited in mid-August, she will ultimately work in the future medical training section of the armed forces. She was formerly employed by the Iraqi Ministry of Health.
“Previously we didn’t have females in our army,” the Iraqi Armed Forces, surgeon general, a brigadier general in the army, said (full name withheld for security reasons).
“But females consist of more than 50 percent of the Iraqi population,” he said.
“They have the mind, the skills, and everything just like males,” he said. “Why don’t we recruit them to get the benefit of these skills?” he added.
Currently consisting of 185 medical personnel – including doctors, medics, technicians, physical therapists, and other various medical support and administrative personnel – the Iraqi army Medical Corps has initial plans that include growth to roughly 2,600 personnel. Growth, however, will change proportionally as the armed forces increases beyond the initial 27 battalion plan.
Recruiting efforts will include additional female medical personnel additions. The Iraqi army had previously allowed females to formally enlist in the military in the 1980s, but in the last decade, roughly, female physicians and medical personnel were strictly civilian employees working for the Iraqi Ministries of Defense and Health – a practice, that according to the surgeon general did a disservice to the overall efficiency of the recruitment effort.
“The main reason for recruiting females,” the surgeon general said, “is to make the army stronger.
“This is the new Iraq after 2003,” he said. “The rights for the females are just like the rights for the males to join the army.”