SC word on K-P health sector

The tall claims of improvement in the health sector of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) by the ruling PTI have come under the top court’s microscope. Heading a three-judge bench hearing a suo-motu case on public hospitals in K-P, Chief Justice Mian Saqib Nisar took exception to the state of patients in K-P’s mental hospitals, noting, “People don’t keep their livestock and pets the way patients are kept in mental hospitals of K-P.”

In power for over five years in the province, the PTI-led government in the province has cried hoarse about how it prioritised health sector development, including enhancing the budget and launching a massive public health insurance scheme. But some of these claims of improvement have fallen away when put to scrutiny by the top court. Justice Nisar, during Monday’s hearing, pointed out that he saw expired medicines being given to patients in public health facilities during his recent visits. Further, the provincial government told the top court that they were still unable to properly dispose of all the waste generated by public hospitals of the province.

The scrutiny of the health system in K-P and the parting of the ‘Naya Pakistan’ curtains during Monday’s hearing harkens back to another hearing earlier this year where the head of a large tertiary care hospital run by the K-P government had sent shockwaves through the province. The chairman of the board of Ayub Teaching Hospital in Abbottabad had told the court in May that the operation theatres at government-run institutions were in such a dismal state that he would not even operate on a dog there.

Coupled with the recent probes into alleged misappropriation of funds in health-related programmes in the province, the claims of improvement in the health sector appear to be more a mirage rather than the reality.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 5^th, 2018.

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