ISLAMABAD, June 8: The health sector in Pakistan suffers from considerable inadequacies with only one doctor available for 1,254 patients, one dentist for 20,839 people, one nurse for 2,671 people and 1,508 patients per hospital bed, says the Economic Survey 2006-07.

The survey which was released on Friday said that for a population of 6,235 people, only one midwife was available while one lady health visitor was available for 18,318 people.

The population-to-health-ratio has recorded a slight improvement than the last year as the number of doctors has increased to 1,254 from 1,274 in 2005-06. However, it is still far below the recommended ratio of one doctor per 1,000 patients.

The total number of registered doctors with the Pakistan Medical and Dental Council (PM&DC) is 122,798 as compared to last year’s 118,062, registered dentists 7,388 compared to 6,734 and registered nurses with the Pakistan Nursing Council (PNC) 57,646 than 51,270 of last year.

There are seven hospitals under the control of the federal government located in Islamabad, Rawalpindi and Karachi in addition to the tertiary care hospitals in all the provinces including those with the status of teaching hospitals but under the administrative jurisdiction of the provinces.

Throughout the country, the network of health care facilities include 924 hospitals, 5,336 basic health units and sub-health centres, 560 rural health centres, 4,712 dispensaries, 906 maternity and child health centres and 288 tuberculosis centres. In total there are 102,073 hospital beds in the country.

During the fiscal year 2006-07, 63 basic health units and 24 rural health centres have been constructed, while 20 rural health centres and 45 basic health units have been upgraded.

Fiscal year 2006-07 has witnessed an impressive increase in health sector allocation, rising from Rs40 billion to Rs50 billion (0.57 per cent of GDP) thus registering a growth of 25 per cent over the last year.