• Launches annual report, says HIV, diarrhoea and other diseases are on the rise, calls for declaration of health emergency

KARACHI: The Pakis­tan Medical Association (PMA) on Thursday launc­h­ed its annual report highlighting how the country is still grappling with its fundamental health challenges, including high neonatal and maternal mortality, contaminated water killing scores of people every year and environmental degradation, now presenting itself in the most severe form — toxic air — affecting almost the entire country.

The report titled ‘Health of the Nation 2026’ was lau­n­c­hed at the PMA House.

According to the report, Pakistan loses 675 newborns and 27 mothers daily from preventable conditions. Poor quality water is responsible for nearly 40 percent of annual deaths in the country, also carrying the heaviest burden of Hep­a­titis C globally and breast cancer (in Asia) as well as the highest rates heart disease in South Asia.

“Poor quality water contributes to about 30 per cent of all diseases reported nati­onwide while diarrhoea remains the leading cause of death among infants and young children. Every fifth Pakistani suffers from a water-related illness, adding immense pressure to the already burdened healthcare system,” the report says.

An alarming development, it points out, has been the rise in X-DR typhoid in Karachi and parts of interior Sindh,

“This extensively drug resistant strain of Salmo­nella Typhi, the bacteria that cause typhoid fever, is spread through contaminated water and food. Ove­ruse and unregulated purchasing of antibiotics have accelerated resistance to first-line treatments, making this disease significan­tly harder to manage and highlighting the urgent need to address water contamination at its roots,” the report says.

The report also represents a worrisome picture of country’s HIV status. It states that Pakistan is experiencing the fastest growing HIV epidemics in the WHO Eastern Mediterranean Region.

“New HIV infections have risen by 200 percent in 15 years (from 16,000 cases in 2010 to 48,000 in 2024). An estimated 350,000 people in Pakistan are living with HIV, yet almost eight in 10 people do not know their status.

“Children are increasingly affected and recent outbreaks in multiple districts have been linked to unsafe injections and blood transfusions at health facilities,” the report says.

It also focuses on the “unchecked rise in medicine prices and persistent shortage of essential life-saving medicines”, stating that the problem has evolved into a major public health emergency.

“There is a documented shortage of 80 essential life-saving drugs, including insulin. When a father is forced to choose between buying flour for his children or insulin for his daughter, the state violates its social contract. This is not inflation, it’s the economic assassination of the poor,” said Dr Abdul Ghafoor Shoro, Secretary General of the PMA Centre.

On behalf of the association, he demanded that the government declare a national health emergency to tackle pressing challenges, announce immediate increase in the health budget to at least three per cent of the GDP.

“Freeze prices of life-saving medicines and launch a crackdown on the black market. Declare the provision of clean drinking water a national security priority to break the vicious cycle of hepatitis and typhoid epidemics,” he said.

Air pollution, he emphasised, was no longer an environmental issue but a public health emergency, while calling for integrating environmental protection into the health policy to combat respiratory and water-borne diseases.

Published in Dawn, February 13th, 2026