Sofya Khafizovna Khakimova

Sofya Khafizovna Khakimova (1924-), was a Tajikistani physician.[1]

She became the first female physician in Tajikistan in 1943. She was the first Tajikistani female surgeon, the first Tajikistani woman to become doctor of medicine science and the only woman doctor in Central Asia to become a member of the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences.

She was born in a working class family. She studied at the newly founded Stalinabad Medical School in 1939, and graduated in 1943. In the 1950s she studied in Moscow, and took a doctors degree in medicine in 1958. In the 1960s, she worked for family planning in Tajikistan. She founded the Research Institute of the protection of Mothers and Children in the Ministry of Health of Tajik SSR, and was its president in 1980-1993. She published her memoirs in 1998.