Quite often, public health care systems in developing countries are struggling because of incompetence and a lack of provider responsiveness to the needs of consumers. On the contrary, the private sector dominates the system of health provision.
Looking at primary health care in isolation from other services that impact the standard of living in a given community is a mistake. Pakistan has a centralised health care system. The government takes responsibility to provide free medical treatment to all citizens in need for health care services. The governmental institutions involved in the health policy process include the federal ministry of health and several planning and approval institutions.
The state’s health care system in Pakistan has suffered a lot, owing to structural fragmentation, resource scarcity, inefficiency and lack of functional specificity, gender insensitivity and inaccessibility. However, partnering with the private sector has shown some exceptional accomplishments. Though challenging but structural performs, involving private health sector have become indispensable.
We do not find the common person much satisfied with the health polices of our government. People complain that medical facilities for them in government hospital and dispensaries are meagre and inadequate. And the private sector is too much expensive that it is out of reach of the common person. There is a wide network of government health service which is been controlled by the ministry of health but not the right treatment is not given properly to the people there.
If we analyse one of the major cause that hinders in proper medical treatment for people is the tremendously high rate of birth the population is increasing so fast that the available doctors, nurses, medicines and facilities in government hospitals cant meet the public requirement. Then the funds collected for the hospitals and given by the government are often misused. The medicines purchased for the poor patients are sold by the corrupt medical staff to the medical store for their own interest. The doctors either do not attend to patients properly because of the large number of people or they prefer to attend the selected patients at their private clinics and also gain heavy money from there.
The only solution to the crisis of health care and the intolerable cost of caring for the sick is to stop making health care a business. It is time to stop the privatisation of the health sector and increase the investment in the public sector. The defence budget must be cut and spending on health increased and new hospitals and medical colleges should be opened in the rural and backward areas. Priority must be given to primary health care and preventive medicine.
The battle for universal health access for every Pakistani can only be won through joining it with the struggle for a socialist transformation of the society. So it is time for the doctors and nurses to join the struggle.
HIRA SAJJAD
Lahore
