The writer is associate professor in the departments of Biomedical Engineering and Medicine at Boston University
Functioning hospitals require a functioning eco-system. It is particularly important in hospitals that operate in environments that have high population density and poor supply chain and infrastructure. As our population continues to increase at an alarming pace, and funding for health infrastructure continues to decline, hospitals will find it hard to cope with the burden of disease. I am not suggesting that there is no malpractice or incompetence, certainly there is plenty of that, but there is a much deeper problem here that is often ignored in the hype and emotion. Even if every single hospital worker was conscientious and did his or her job with utmost dedication, failure of equipment due to power cuts or lack of oxygen in the tanks due to budget cuts, or malfunctioning equipment due to parts that never arrive will plague our systems and continue to affect the most vulnerable.
As our urban centres get bigger and bigger, the challenges faced by our hospitals are also going to increase substantially. Inquiry into a single incident or dismissing staff of a single hospital is not going to solve the problem that we face as a nation. Reactionary policy is not going to do us much good. The lack of oxygen, for example, is not going to be solved by a single staff member, but needs to be evaluated at a systems level. We do not need to just look at an individual institution but the system as a whole. Just because this tragic incident happened at a particular hospital does not mean that other hospitals are immune to dysfunction.
Here, there are two things that need to happen if we are to improve our system. First, an evaluation of the hospital system and performance at the provincial level. This should be done by impartial experts, ideally from another province and those who have no political, personal or financial conflict of interest. If we are to solve our problems, we need to first identify them clearly. A transparent analysis will go a long way in improving the function of our health system. Second, we need to involve a bigger group of stakeholders in solving our problems. Technological breakdown, lack of any local capacity to solve problems with technology and poor supply chain management are common problems even in our better functioning hospitals. Rarely do we engage experts from engineering institutions or schools of management to create local solutions to our stubborn and persistent problems.
Better functioning hospitals are a backbone to not only a healthy society, but also a safer and more prosperous society. We need to ensure that our hospitals are a gateway to health, not a highway to preventable deaths.
Published in The Express Tribune, June 10th, 2014.
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There is utterly no doubt that we need to bring improvement everywhere starting from our own sleves. Our habits and characteristics being the most fundamental matters in dire need of improvement. No one will get any encouragement from the disheartening fact that before they can set about bringing any improvement in the lives of some people more and more people have been brought into our already congested world. At the root of every problem, if we ever care to believe, are us, the humankind. The more the humankind more the problem as the evidence is all over infront of us. Perhaps it wiil help if everyone of us sets about to launch a campaign to get this message out to the masses. The message being that the future of your off spring is destined to be bleak in view of the fact that the resources of the whole world that support human life is dwindling fast with the consequence that crime, violence, unrest etc. is becoming a daily routine for people in parts of Asia, Africa and South America. Europe and N. America is being deluged by people seeking the life, people in Europe and in N. America have built with hard thinking and hard and honest labour. The message should be that what will happen when Europe and N. America is no more able to absorb any more people. So it is best to work to improve our lives here in our countries with the same hard thinking and hard and honest work the Europeans has achieved.The message should be "Produce more of consumables than the consumers or else you will suffer the consequences of your own bad habits."
This Bio-med engineer has failed to put his propsed recommendations in the right order. For bad performance one has the choice to blame the staff or the patients and not the equipment in the first place. Is the author talking about the American or Pakistani hospitals? The latter of these will very easily show that working doctors show very little in clinical research work which usualy reflects the standard of their performance!
Rex Minor
Hum zinda kaum hain. We are a nuclear power. We can't be bothered about mundane stuff like education, health, clean driking water, or electricity etc.