Health of the province: ‘Medicine sales without prescription is a concern’

Report says the Constitution does not guarantee the right to health.

LAHORE:

Budgetary allocation for the health sector needs to be increased to at least 2.5 per cent of Gross Domestic Product to provide health facilities to people, says a report by Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP).

State of Human Rights in 2012, a report by the HRCP, has recently been launched. The report states that Pakistan is not one of the 115 countries that guarantee the ‘right to health’ to their citizens. The responsibility of the state to ensure health and adequate medical services, the report says, does receive a mention in the Principles of Policy in the Constitution. “The primary problem with this is that Principles of Policy are not directly enforceable, and a citizen cannot petition a court to have this right enforced by the state,” the report says.

The report states the Pakistan lags behind in maternal health and infant mortality as compared to other developing countries, adding that it is unlikely that the country will achieve the relevant Millennium Development Goals (MGDs) by 2015.

“The infant mortality rate at 63 deaths out of 1,000 live births and the under-five year mortality rate 86.5 per 1,000 children remain serious concerns. The high mortality figures are largely due to water-borne diseases and malnutrition. Maternal Mortality Rate at 276 deaths per 100,000 live births is unlikely to be reduced to 140 by 2015 as desired in the MDGs. Contraceptive Prevalence Rate is 30 per cent. It needs to be increases to 55 per cent by 2015. The fertility rate is 4.1 live births per woman which needs to be reduced to 2.1,” the report states.

The report states that there are 9 million drug addicts in Pakistan. The number is on the rise. Two million addicts, the report says, are between the ages of 15 and 25.  “The secretary of Ministry of Narcotics Control stated that under the National Drug Control Master Plan (2012-2015), the government of Pakistan aimed to mainstream drug treatment and rehabilitation services into the health system,” the report says.

The report mentions as a serious concern that prescriptions are not required for selling several drugs which are internationally recognised as requiring a prescription. “This allows people to go to a medical store and ask for any drug. Such injudicious use of drugs has led to improper and unsupervised medication and often aggravates the patients’ condition and sometimes even turns out to be fatal,” the report says.

The report recommends decentralisation and de-politicisation of health governance to fix systematic problems. It also recommends that primary healthcare should be prioritised with emphasis on immunisation programmes, provision of safe drinking water and sewerage systems. The report also recommends that the Drug Regulatory Authority work vigilantly in order to avoid any casualties due to the use of fake, substandard and unregistered drugs. “A strategy needs to be evolved to achieve all health related MDGs including maternal, neo-natal, infant and child mortality and women’s reproductive rights need to be ensured,” the report further recommends.

“There is a need to maintain uniform standards of health education and a coherent drug policy and pricing. There is a dire and immediate need for a comprehensive crackdown on quacks and clear guidelines and a formal licensing process for allowing any practice of alternative medicine,” the report adds.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 14^th, 2013.