Administering wrong prescriptions is as common in Pakistan as controlling a viral epidemic
GUJRANWALA: Administering wrong prescriptions is as common in Pakistan as controlling a viral epidemic. People living in slums or rural areas are more vulnerable to such due to their being treated by quacks or at local government dispensaries. A government hospital, clinic nor quacks, neither are an exception in leading to such cases where the patient eventually dies after being prescribed wrong medicine. Back in 2012, over 100 people died after consuming a blood-thinning medicine prescribed by doctors in Punjab’s government hospitals. The medicines were being distributed for free to low-income patients at the Punjab institute of Cardiology. Further, in most of the cases, families of the deceased assuming that the patients have died a natural death and not being literate enough to go in for investigation of the cause of the death do not feel the need to pursue the issue through the police and court. Much like the education sector, quacks and hospitals haunt the health sector.
As the profession carries a great responsibility of giving and saving lives, the problems in the sector must be dealt with immediate action and negligence of any sort ought not to be tolerated.
Ahmed Ali
Published in The Express Tribune, October 14th, 2017.
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