Zerefeh Bashur

Zerefeh Bashur, MD (Safita, Syria; 1884 – 1968) was the first female licensed physician in the Levant.

[1][2] Zerefeh Bashur was born in 1884 into an Orthodox Christian family in Safita, Syria, then a part of the Ottoman Empire.

[3] Born into a family of physicians, Zerefeh often accompanied her father and older brothers in their clinics.

She left for the US in 1907, enrolling in the University of Illinois College of Medicine that same year, and receiving her medical degree in 1911.

[6] Dr. Bashur returned to the Middle East after completing her training, and practiced in Tripoli and Safita until her death in 1968, bringing modern medicine to women in the Middle East for the first time, and delivering thousands of newborns over the course of a career that spanned over half a century.