Command Hospital gets its first woman chief

Tribune News Service

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Chandigarh, April 17

Major General Mukti Sharma has assumed charge as the Commandant, Command Hospital, Chandimandir. She is the first woman officer to command the hospital. Prior to this appointment, she was posted as the Major General (Medical), Headquarters Maharashtra, Gujarat and Goa Area in Mumbai.

An alumnus of the Armed Forces Medical College (AFMC), Pune, she was commissioned into the Army Medical Corps (AMC) in March 1980 and later did her MD in paediatrics. She has also done her post doctoral fellowship in paediatric cardiology from the All-India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, and has the distinction of being a visiting scholar in the Division of Paediatric Cardiology, UCLA School of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles in the US. She became a Fellow of the Cardiological Society of India in 2010 and the Fellow of the Indian Academy of Paediatrics in 2012. 

At present, there are just two woman officers of the rank of Major General in the AMC. The other officer is posted at the Army Headquarters in New Delhi. Currently, there are no general rank woman doctors in the Air Force or the Navy. 

While Maj Gen Sharma is the only woman AMC officer at present to be commanding a major military hospital, there have been several woman officers who have commanded military hospitals where the appointment is tenable by officers of the rank of a Brigadier or a Colonel. Earlier, Maj Gen Nirmal Ahuja, the first woman to become a Major General, commanded the Central Command Hospital, Lucknow, before retiring in 1987. In addition, there are two vacancies at the rank of Major General in the Military Nursing Service.

Two woman military doctors, Lt Gen Punita Arora, who commanded the AFMC and later shifted to the Navy as the Director General Medical Services, and Air Marshal Padmavathy Bandopadhyay, former Director General Medical Services (Air), achieved three-star rank. At least seven woman doctors in the three services have reached the rank of Major General or equivalent.