Elderly Bachai still remembers the worst night of her life when her only daughter Salma, a nine-month pregnant woman, had died due to unavailability of a maternity home in the area. Bachai lives in Rehri Goth where the Sindh government had established a hospital, but three years since it has yet to become functional.
“We rely on a dispensary where only minor diseases are treated and it is open only during the day. In case of an after-hours emergency, we have no other option than the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre, which takes over two hours and over Rs 1,000 to reach,” she said over the telephone. Thousands of residents of coastal villages, fishermen settlements and traditional hamlets scattered along the 129km Karachi coast are without proper healthcare facilities.
In such a vastly scattered area, there is only one functional public sector hospital in Ibrahim Hyderi. The residents of the remaining areas are forced to rely on one-room Basic Health Units that provide basic facilities until afternoon or quacks. These villages are not located in the remote Thar Desert or any other district, but within Karachi. Sheer negligence on the part of the Health Department and the cold war between the ruling Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and its coalition partner Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), which holds control of the department since the health minister is affiliated with the MQM, has caused the health sector to suffer a lot in the past three years.
Whatever developments works that Sindh Chief Minister Syed Qaim Ali Shah mentioned in his three-year performance speech on Thursday were only carried out in the PPP or the MQM stronghold. Shah mentioned establishing universities in Naudero, the home district of President Asif Ali Zardari; in Larkana, a PPP fort; or in Lyari Town, another PPP stronghold; or those areas that are under the MQM’s control. During last year’s flood, the performance of the Health Department at the relief camps and in the flood-hit areas has also remained a big question mark for many, whereas rural areas have yet to receive basic healthcare facilities.
Besides all of that, the rampant corruption in the Health Department has also remained prominent in the news headlines, which clearly exhibits bad governance in the province.