March 2016 www.womanthismonth.com 36 PEOPLE | interview Blazing Her Own Trail Bahrain has Dr Lana Peters to credit for introducing the science of osteopathy to its people. Behnaz Sanjana caught up with this pioneer to learn more about how she started off and where she’s heading to. When Dr Lana Peters stepped onto the shores of Bahrain as a fresh graduate in 1986, she had great hopes for the future of osteopathy on the island. She was confident Bahrain would take to the branch of medicine that she felt so passionately about. After all, she knew the country well; it had been her home since she was 11 years old, till she took off for the UK to study further. “Osteopathy, at the time, was generally unheard of and definitely not licensed in Bahrain,” says Dr Peters. “One of the orthopaedic surgeons of the BDF Hospital, who knew all about osteopathy, asked me to work at the Isa Town Sports Centre.” After five years of consulting in osteopathy in Bahrain, life’s course took her to Australia by which time she was a mother of two little boys. She had a successful stint in Australia, where she ran two practices simultaneously. But the year 2006 was a turning point. “I lost my husband very suddenly. I had my family there and my practice was booming, but nothing had the same meaning. I felt the need to move out of my comfort zone,” she reminisces. To find her purpose, she decided to reconnect with the Gulf island she’d built many memories on. “I had met my husband in Bahrain, my children were born here and my own formative years were spent here. So I returned with a mission. It was very important for me to Ongoing study at the clinic It was very important for me to formally introduce osteopathy to Bahrain’s population, and I just knew I would be the one to achieve it
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy Mjk0MTkxMQ==