Naima Mahmudova

Naima Mahmudova was born on 10 August 1928 in Tashkent. Her father was the Uzbek poet and public figure Botu (real name Mahmud Khodiyev); her mother, Valentina Vasilyeva, was a writer. Her father was repressed in the 1930s, shot in 1938 and rehabilitated in 1958.

She graduated from the Tashkent Medical Institute in 1951 and went to work in the sanitary and epidemiological service, first as chief physician of the Urgut district station and, from 1958 to 1963, of the Samarkand regional station. In 1963 she moved with her family to Tashkent.

From 1963 to 1971 Mahmudova was deputy minister of health of the Uzbek SSR. From 1971 she was deputy chair of the Uzbek Council of Trade Unions and from 1977 to 1986 its chair. She was twice elected a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the Uzbek SSR and, in 1979–1989, a deputy of the Soviet of Nationalities of the USSR Supreme Soviet (10th and 11th convocations) for the Karakalpak ASSR, and chaired the health commission of the USSR Supreme Soviet. She was a member of the Communist Party and a delegate to its 26th Congress, and sat on the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions, the Uzbek society for friendship and cultural ties with foreign countries and the Soviet Women’s Committee.

In 1968 she defended a candidate’s dissertation, “The historical development of therapy in Uzbekistan”, and in 1975 a doctoral dissertation on organising the medical rehabilitation and social adaptation of children with cerebral palsy in the republic. She became a professor in 1986.

From 1986 to 2000 she headed the department of social hygiene (from 1997 the department of general hygiene, social hygiene and health-care organisation) at the Tashkent Pediatric Medical Institute, and afterwards remained there as a consulting professor. She held the Orders of the Red Banner of Labour and of the October Revolution.

Naima Mahmudova died on 7 June 2017.