KARACHI, Jan 12: The health sector is in disarray for which situation the president and the prime minister are directly responsible.

The health indicators today are as bad as they were several years ago even though a number of projects, aimed at bettering the same, have been launched.

Unethical practices are rampant in the medical community and the pharmaceutical companies often manage to 'buy' the services of certain doctors in exchange for foreign trips or other 'incentives'. The doctors who avail of these benefits unnecessarily prescribe medicines 'pushed' by the pharmaceutical companies.

Despite their 'best' efforts, the health authorities are yet to eradicate polio. The prevalence of tuberculosis is increasing and hepatitis B and C are spreading at a rapid pace too.

These views were expressed by Dr Umer Ayub and Dr Shershah Syed - the president and secretary-general respectively of the Pakistan Medical Association - at a press briefing held on Wednesday in the PMA House.

The two were of the opinion that the government was largely trying to abrogate its responsibilities towards the people by shifting its financial burden to the private sector.

The authorities had largely ignored the primary healthcare sector and the field of medical education had largely been left to the whims of certain 'entrepreneurs' who were more interested in making a quick buck than in imparting quality education and training.

The centre as well as the provinces had health policies that were not even worth the papers on which these were written. There had been no improvement in the maternal death and infant mortality rates in recent years despite the launch of ambitious projects.

The situation suited the elite as they could milk the system by launching various projects of their own. Similarly, the moneyed people were better placed as compared to the poor when it came to obtaining care.

The civil hospitals throughout the country provided minimal facilities to the needy section of the population for which the premier and the president were responsible. The government, by curbing the flow of money to these healthcare centres, was doing a disservice to the masses, said the two doctors.

Some 600,000 quacks were duping the people, and minting money in the process, while the authorities chose to look the other way. Similarly, spurious drugs were sold openly in the market despite rules that outlawed the same.

The president and secretary-general of the PMA said that except one no private medical institution in the country fulfilled the requirements of the Pakistan Medical and Dental Council (PMDC). Yet, these institutions had so far managed to escape punitive action.

The government looked the other way as doctors and surgeons charged exorbitant amounts from the patients, most of whom were poor, said the two doctors. They pointed out that in recent months patients visiting the government-run healthcare centres increasingly complained of hunger- and poverty-related ailments.

Under the guidelines maintained by the World Health Organization, there should be 15 nurses for every doctor in the country, they said. However, due to the lopsided and short sighted policies of the government, today there were eight doctors for one nurse.

The number of nurses, midwives and other paramedical staff currently available to the hospitals was simply insufficient to meet the needs of any healthcare system, let alone that of a good one.

The legislators should look into the issue of organ transplantation as soon as possible, they maintained. At the moment, organs were being sold in the market because an overwhelming number of poor people sought to make ends meet.

Dr Ayub and Dr Syed added that the authorities failed to realize that HIV/AIDS had almost the same mode of transmission as hepatitis. Today hepatitis was spreading fast and tomorrow the same could happen in the case of HIV/AIDS.

Should this happen, the national healthcare system would simply collapse under the great weight of opportunistic and other diseases that commonly afflicted the people living with HIV/AIDS.

The two gentlemen unveiled an "Alternate Health Policy", which had been approved at the biennial meeting of the PMA recently. Under this policy, they said, the PMDC was supposed to be strengthened so that it could play an effective role in bettering the standard of medical and dental education in the country.

The PMDC, after the much-needed changes, could also help improve the quality of healthcare, they said. The centre as well as the provinces should come up with adequate health policies which were synergistic in nature and which complemented each other.

A campaign should be launched against the 600,000 quacks and the laboratories and blood banks that played with the lives of people should be closed down immediately, they added.