Health matters and the SC

ISLAMABAD: Recently, the Supreme Court has taken cognisance of four important health-related issues. These are: a strike by doctors in Lahore, the medicine reaction tragedy, a hepatitis C epidemic and the country’s faltering polio campaign.

The strike by doctors in Lahore could have been avoided had the health department ensured that the doctors abided by their own professional ethics, which are based on their motto which says that a doctor must provide medical care to a person in need of it. The reason behind the strike may have more to do with the status of doctors and could be resolved through administrative methods.

The same is true for the polio campaign, which seems to be affected, to some extent, by a lack of trained personnel — as much as it may be by a wave of conservatism in certain parts of the country. Then, consider the spread of hepatitis C. Its spread is caused in large part because municipal byelaws and basic health regulations are not followed. Take the case of barbers who do not properly sterilise their instruments, and this is a big source of the spread of hepatitis C and B.

As for the drug reaction tragedy, the fault is more of the government since it is its duty to ensure that medicines are checked for quality. When a doctor prescribes a particular medicine to a patient, he or she would be justified in assuming that the medicine bought by the patient would be genuine.

What the apex court can certainly do in this particular matter is make the government pay adequate compensation to the families of all those who lost their lives after taking the contaminated medicines.

Dr M I Shaikh

Published in The Express Tribune, February 24^th, 2012.