Category Archives: Health

Joy of giving

General, Health, Organ Trade and Donation, Organ Transplant, SIUT, Social Issues

By Zubeida Mustafa

PAKISTAN is a bundle of contradictions. We have acquired the latest technologies in medical fields. But we have failed to keep pace with these changes. In fact, socially, we have stagnated if not actually regressed.

Take the case of organ transplantation, which has made great headway in the country thanks to the Sindh Institute of Urology and Transplantation. The institute provides free treatment to nearly 2.6 million patients every year, and performs 350 kidney transplantations from live-related donors. The SIUT also provides free-of-cost, lifelong healthcare to the donors as well as the recipients.

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A dubious solution

Health

By Zubeida Mustafa

THE Pakistan Medical and Dental Council (PMDC) is once again in the limelight, unfortunately for negative reasons. An ordinance signed last week by the president (himself a dentist by profession), who should have understood its implications better, provides for the constitution of a 17-member council to run its affairs. The PMA, the body that represents the doctors, has rejected the ordinance on the grounds that it is ‘undemocratic’.

The document provides for members of the PMDC being nominated by the prime minister, the chief ministers of the four provinces, the College of Physicians and Surgeons Pakistan (CPSP) and the armed forces. Its tenure will be for three years and it will elect its own president. Its composition is diverse with some laypersons also being included to represent the public in addition to the medical professionals. The sceptical response from some quarters is understandable. It is feared that the ordinance will allow some vested interests to monopolise control of the PMDC for their own advantage.

The fact is that the PMDC has had a controversial history from the start. It was introduced by the Ayub regime in 1962 through an ordinance and since then has mostly depended on ordinances for its existence. On some occasions, the government of the day (the PPP in 2012 and the PML-N in 2014) brought the PMDC issue before parliament for enacting a law but that was jettisoned by a subsequent ordinance. The approach has basically been an ad hoc one.

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No hope is suicide

Children and Youth, Education, Environment, Health, Mental health, SIUT, Social Issues

By Zubeida Mustafa

ACCORDING to the World Health Organisation, suicide is the second leading cause of death among 15- to 29-year-olds worldwide. It has also been reported that the incidence of suicide has been on the rise in Pakistan. WHO put the figure at an estimated 13,337 for all ages in 2012. It would certainly be higher today.

Only recently, this paper reported three students killed themselves in Chitral after receiving their examination results, while another survived. The Human Rights Programme’s chairman reported that 40 to 45 people commit suicide in Chitral (population 447,362) every year. Continue reading No hope is suicide →

To cling or go?

Children and Youth, Health

By Zubeida Mustafa

SPEAKING at a seminar, a medical professional once described the changing relationship between patients and physicians. He recalled the time when for centuries, physicians had the upper hand by virtue of their superior knowledge and their ethical standards.

Then the parties achieved a balance in their relationship as public awareness about health issues grew and patients could question the physician’s diagnosis and treatment. They also got more space to decide on the options for treatment available to them. Continue reading To cling or go? →

Inequality kills

Administration, Children and Youth, Defence and Disarmament, Economy, Education, Health, Housing, Labour, Social Issues

By Zubeida Mustafa

OURS is an unequal society. The more unequal we become, the more fiascos will visit us as we have been witnessing lately. How correct was Justice Louis Brandeis of the US Supreme Court when, many decades ago, he famously said words to the effect ‘you can have extreme inequality or you can have democracy — you cannot have both’. We love to delude ourselves with the belief that we have democracy in spite of inequality.

Today, the world’s attention is focused on the issue of inequality which has become a major subject in the global economic discourse. In 2015, the UN Assembly adopted the Sustainable Development Goals, one of which states that by 2030, governments will progressively achieve and sustain the income growth of the bottom 40 per cent of the population at a rate higher than the national average. Continue reading Inequality kills →