Interesting anecdote I came across in my daily Iraq reading:

... I must wait until mid-afternoon to return to Sadr City, the stronghold of Moktada al-Sadr, the Shiite cleric who opposes the American presence in Iraq. I plan to meet a woman doctor who works in the emergency room of the Ali Ben Ali Talib Hospital, one of 14 public hospitals in Baghdad. Rana is only 26, but one doesn't need to have practiced medicine a long time in Iraq to lose one's illusions.

"In this district, the patients don't respect us. They don't even bother to disarm when they come here, despite all the notices at the entrance," she says.
"Sometimes doctors are directly threatened. You get used to it."

A non-practicing Shiite, Rana does not wear a veil. In blue jeans and a white blouse, her small, elegant silhouette is easily recognizable in the corridors of the hospital, where she spends four days a week.

It is not surprising that in this ultra-conservative district of Sadr City - an enclave entirely controlled by the Mahdi army, al-Sadr's militia - many of the patients, mostly illiterate, refuse to be treated by a female doctor.

Exasperated at repeatedly having to justify herself to the patients, Rana dared to go and complain to the representatives of Moktada, with the support of her veiled female colleagues.

To her own surprise, they took her side by not asking her to veil herself. That was probably because there is so great a shortage of doctors. Since 2003, more than 200 have fled the city, and the exodus continue ...