He is privileged so he could have easily afforded private hospital bills
PERTH: I see irony in the fact that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif chooses to be treated in London. It seems that despite being the prime minister of this country, he doesn’t want to entrust his life in the hands of the doctors of his own nation. The level of dissatisfaction that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and his family have towards the medical system, deployed by his own government, is quite apparent by this decision.
Maybe his decision of going abroad for treatment is due to the fact that the prime minister is well aware of the pathetic conditions of government hospitals in Pakistan (that includes Punjab, too), where despite waiting in long queues, ordinary citizens fail to get proper attention by doctors. And, even if they luckily get the attention of doctors after running from one department to another, they have to struggle with a lack of proper equipment in these hospitals and a shortage of life-saving medications, or worse — counterfeit medicines.
It is not that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif had only one option of getting treated in public hospitals. He is privileged so he could have easily afforded private hospital bills. However, he still went to London. This shows that this country is not good enough when it comes to his precious life or for doing business. Foreign shores will always be the answer to all the miseries that the Sharif family will ever encounter.
Durdana Adeel
Published in The Express Tribune, June 4th, 2016.
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