Patients waiting in line at a hospital. PHOTO: EXPRESS
A police report revealed that as many as 300 protests were held on Mall Road last year by different bodies of medical healthcare facilities, including doctors, paramedical staffs, nurses, lady health workers, nutritionists and staffers of basic health units.
While, in the first quarter of the current year, the protest by healthcare bodies were still being staged across Punjab.
Pakistan Medical Association (PMA) President Dr Izhar Ahmed Chaudhry said the bad planning of government’s health officials was the main cause of the sorry state of affair of the healthcare system.
Addressing at a seminar to mark World Health Day at PMA House on Sunday, he said, on the other hand, strict rules and regulation for medical students also depict that the government was no more interested to encourage medical health care profession in Pakistan.
“Due to the bad system even doctors have taken to streets or trying to go on abroad,” he remarked. He said the empty slots of vice chancellors in different medical universities, use of unfair means in medical tests, braindrain of medical professors was telling the ugly truth.
“The worst collateral damage of this system is that the people are more interested to go to quacks, hakeems and homoeopathic doctors as they cannot afford the proper medical healthcare facilities,” he lamented.
Speaking on the occasion, PMA General Secretary Dr Kamran Saeed revealed that according to the global access to healthcare index report, Pakistan ranked 52th among 92 countries in term of least availability of healthcare facilities. “Everyone can visit and see the vulnerable condition of our public sector hospitals where never-ending queues describe the whole situation,” he added.
“According to World Healthcare Organisation, Pakistan is one of the top countries where mother and child are dying frequently due to lack of healthcare facilities,” he said adding “on the other hand, it is slapped on Pakistan as a large number of deaths being occurred due to drinking contaminated water and environmental pollution.”
He said the government has divided the medical department into two different factions, while government’s health ministers, consultants and other health officials are being paid high salaries for doing nothing, which also reflects corruption inside the departments.
According to WHO, the past few years have seen some improvement in economic growth however, the social indicators remain challenging and Pakistan is currently lagging behind.
The mortality rate of children under the age of five in Pakistan remains high at 94 per 1,000 live births with diarrheal diseases, while infant mortality stands at 78 in 1,000 and maternal mortality ratio at an estimated 276 in 100,000.
The report further revealed that Pakistan has a health service environment that was challenged by the impact of poverty, a changing burden of disease, communicable, non-communicable, the lack of access to quality health services for its rural population and lifestyles. The situation is further complicated by increasing numbers of both the aged population and young age groups.
Published in The Express Tribune, April 9th , 2018.
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