Babies' deaths

The heartbreaking loss of 20 infants — mostly newborns — at Pakpattan's District Headquarters (DHQ) Hospital between June 16 and 22 is a damning indictment of systemic healthcare failures. While five health officials, including the Health CEO and Medical Superintendent, have been remanded, the initial inquiries reveal a tragedy rooted in layers of negligence and dysfunction that demand intense reforms and punitive measures alone.

Initial probes suggest 15 babies were born in perilous conditions at private clinics or through untrained midwives and were already critically ill when they were brought to DHQ Hospital, often without their mothers — which further complicated treatment. Even though at least five deaths are being blamed on unsafe deliveries by midwives, the hospital's role remains egregious. The fact that the internal inquiry gave staff a clean chit when the CM's probe found problems ranging from non-functional incubators and failure to use life-saving equipment, reselling of oxygen and other medical supplies, along with absent specialist rounds, reveals a culture of apathy, and we haven't even discussed the fact that the bodies of four dead were "misplaced".

While the scale of problems in Pakpattan is eye-catching, similar issues are regularly reported in cities, towns and villages across the country. Arrests may assuage the immediate outrage, but they do little to discourage the recurrence of such incidents. Oversight cannot be reactive — the government needs to actively monitor health facilities around the country and punish negligence and corruption at every level if it is to tackle the culture of apathy, where even honest doctors and other health professionals are unwilling to step forward and blow the whistle, lest they end up as the only ones to face any consequences. Work also needs to be done to regulate 'traditional medicine' practitioners, such as midwives, many of whom have absolutely no qualifications, formal training or access to basic medical supplies.