KARACHI, July 19: The Pakistan Peoples Party on Wednesday alleged that like all other issues of national importance, government was also badly ignoring the health sector as thousands of persons die everyday in Pakistan due to unavailability of medicines and proper treatment at public sector hospitals.According to health survey report issued by the PPP media cell, a majority of people die daily due to nervous tension and related diseases, like hypertension, heart ailments and diabetes, and they are not provided proper and timely medical treatment at government hospitals in Pakistan.

Hundreds of patients die daily in the country owing to unavailability of medicines and doctors at public-sector hospitals as provision of quality health and education facilities to masses has never remained the priority of the government, it added.

The report deplored that extent of government's negligence towards provision of health facilities to people could be judged from a report that during last six months, over 600 children suffering from water-borne diseases lost their lives at Chandka Medical Hospital Larkana due to lack medicine and proper treatment.

Instead of taking notice of the situation, the government and said hospital's management were trying to give an impression that these children were never brought to the medical facility, the report added.

It also criticized the Sindh Governor, the Chief Minister and other functionaries for their failure to establish Hospital Management Boards, saying authorities in Sindh were only making tall but hollow claims of providing quality medical services to people, especially in rural areas of the province.

Citing findings of NGOs and human rights organizations, the PPP report claimed that there were over 0.6 million quacks operating in the country, with 150000 only in Sindh but neither any federal agency nor provincial authorities were taking any sort of action against them.

“Over 1610 quacks are playing with lives of innocent people only in Hyderabad,” the report said and alleged that like other departments and ministries, the health department officials too were engaged in money-making practice instead of providing any relief to poverty-stricken people of Sindh.

It further charged that during the last five years, most of the drugs registered and approved by the health ministry were fake and counterfeit and added over 4 million persons in Sindh only were suffering from asthma due to environmental pollution, hypertension and other reasons.

But neither any public sector hospital in Sindh has specialists dealing in asthma nor medicines for treatment of asthma were available while every 10th person in Sindh was either carrier or was suffering from different forms hepatitis due to polluted water supply.

The report criticized the government for paying no attention to various kinds of diseases being reported in Sindh at an alarming ratio and giving less attention towards improvement of health facilities in the province, saying patients suffering from either deadly or minor diseases were preferring suicides instead of visiting government hospitals.—PPI