According to the constitution of the World Health Organisation (WHO), “The enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health is one of the fundamental rights of every human being”. The constitution of Pakistan guarantees basic rights and liberties to all citizens of the state. These rights are derived from the fundamental principles of justice in accordance with which the state of Pakistan assumes the sole monopoly of power over its citizens.

There is a universal health care system in place in Pakistan, which is supposed to provide health facilities to the citizens. This means that any citizen of Pakistan can get treated at any public sector health care facility in the country.

Pakistan has a wide network of health-care infrastructure, including 919 hospitals, 5334 basic health units (BHUs) and sub-health centres, 560 rural health centres (RHCs), 4712 dispensaries, 905 maternal and child health (MCH) centres and 288 tuberculosis centres. This system is supposed to cater to a population of around 190 million people.

Thus, one doctor at a public hospital is supposed to cater to about 1724 people, while 1504 people have to vie for a single bed at a public hospital. Pakistan ranks 120th out of 200 countries when we look at statistics on physicians-per-1000-people, with only India, Iran and Egypt – among developing nations – standing below us.

Pakistan is among the only three countries left in the world that still has the polio virus, the other two being Afghanistan and Nigeria. Recent reports indicate that Karachi, Peshawar, Hyderabad, Lahore and Rawalpindi have turned ‘polio-endemic’; there has been continuous detection of the wild poliovirus type-1 in the sewage samples collected from there.

There are more than a million people in Pakistan with chronic liver disease, while 10 percent of the population has been exposed to Hepatitis B and C viruses. As many as 1.2 million people die of waterborne diseases in Pakistan every year, of them 250,000 are children under the age of five years.

In a recent meeting organised by a public health research and consultancy firm, 54 percent of the most serious crises and shocks Pakistan has suffered in the last three years have been health-related as compared to only three percent that have been law-and-order related. We have had the widespread dengue virus infection, the PIC (Punjab Institute of Cardiology)-syndrome outbreak, the Naegleria infection in Karachi and the very recent cough syrup controversy.

To quote a report by Pakistan Institute of Development Economics (Pide), “Pakistan’s health-care system is inadequate, inefficient, and expensive; and comprises an under-funded and inefficient public sector along with a mixed, expensive and unregulated private sector. These poor conditions in the health sector may be attributed to a number of factors like poverty, malnutrition, unequal access to health facilities, inadequate allocation for health, and high population growth and infant mortality.”

There is an acute shortage of data for health indicators in Pakistan. Health is not a priority for either the government or the people until emergency strikes. Every new government has brought in new health policies but the implementation of such policies is another matter. Take the case of the most populated province of Punjab. There has been no health minister there for the last five years and the chief minister has kept the portfolio with himself.

The current government has opened medical colleges in almost all major cities of Punjab over the last four years. However, the lack of planning is apparent since no new teaching hospital has been established. Without proper teaching hospitals, medical students graduating from newer colleges will have to move to other cities for clinical training. The last teaching hospital established in Punjab was Jinnah Hospital in Lahore in the mid-90s. The half-completed building of Wazirabad Institute of Cardiology is a living testament to retaliatory politics.

Started on the orders of the previous chief minister of Punjab, this project aims to cater to cardiac patients between Lahore, Rawalpindi and adjoining areas. At present, if a person needs cardiac care in Gujranwala, Gujrat or Jhelum, s/he needs to visit either Lahore or Rawalpindi. Time, though is a crucial matter in cases of heart disease and early detection can significantly improve the patient’s chances. Because of Lahore-centric health spending, patients are brought from all over northern Punjab to Lahore.

There are 17 medical colleges in Lahore, compared to 17 in the rest of the province. For about 600 burn patients annually, there are a grand total of three specialised burn centres in Punjab. Similarly, only 155 mechanical ventilators are available in Lahore’s public hospitals for a patient load of more than 500,000 patients every month. If this is the health of our health care, what are we to do?

source: thenews.com.pk