Tunis/Tunisia — The Agence de Mise en Valeur du Patrimoine et de Promotion Culturelle (AMVPPC) has paid a posthumous tribute to Tunisia's oldest doctor and the first woman doctor in the Arab world, Dr Tawhida Ben Cheikh (January 2, 1909 - December 6, 2010).
The agency published an extract from the book "La Tunisie Millénaire, une Longue Histoire et des timbres poste" by Taoufik Ben Salah, published in 2012, which traces the history of Tunisia from prehistory to the present day.
Taoufik Ben Salah, an economist by training and a lover of history and philately, published this work on the history of Tunisia through stamps, from the Paleolithic period to the Tunisian January 14, 2011 Revolution.
Tawhida Ben Cheikh comes from a family originally from Ras Jbel (Bizerte). She was the first Tunisian to graduate from high school (1928). She obtained her doctorate in medicine in Paris in 1936.
On her return to Tunis, she set up a private practice specialising in gynaecology. She then contributed to the establishment of family planning in Tunisia through the department she set up at the Charles-Nicolle hospital in 1963, followed by the Montfleury family planning clinic in 1970. Between 1955 and 1964, she headed the maternity ward at the Charles Nicolle Hospital. She ran the same department at the Aziza Othmana Hospital until she retired in 1977.
In addition to her medical work, she dedicated her life to militant action in the service of Tunisia. In 1937, she was put in charge of the first Tunisian women's magazine, "Leila", published in French in Tunisia in 1936.
She was also vice-president of the Tunisian Red Crescent and a member of the Union of Tunisian Muslim Women.
Tawhida Ben Cheikh is the niece of the late Tahar Ben Ammar, who negotiated Tunisia's independence in 1956 and signed the Memorandum of Understanding with France on March 20, 1956.
A banknote bearing the image of Dr Tawhida Ben Cheikh has been in circulation since March 2020. She is the second woman to appear on Tunisian currency after Elissa, the founder of Carthage.
