By Zubeida Mustafa
I was six years old when Pakistan was so turbulently born. Six obviously is a difficult age to try to comprehend major national and international events even when they create extreme upheavals in a child’s life. Still, I could sense the rising tensions around me. We already had just moved to Delhi when it was decided in June 1947 that India was to be partitioned. Continue reading Pakistan’s Changing Images of India: A Personal View
By Zubeida Mustafa
Source: Dawn
THE Alma Ata message of ‘health for all’ has at long last reached the policy planners in Islamabad. Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz has said that the government’s health strategy was focused on the prevention and control of diseases, provision of maternal and child health care and ensuring nationwide outreach of public health facilities. These are indeed laudable goals and have been demanded by health professionals for decades now.
At a time when there has been a palpable shift in the government’s policy from the public to the private sectors in the areas of health and education, social justice demands that the basic health and education needs of the people should be met because that is the fundamental human right of all.
In the health sector, this should pose less of a challenge if the government undertakes its responsibilities conscientiously and with integrity. But regrettably, this has not been done — the prime minister’s statement notwithstanding — and the failure to follow a vigorous preventive approach while withdrawing support to the curative side of medicine has inflicted enormous suffering on the people.
Continue reading Is it really health for all?