KARACHI, June 2: The Pakistan Islamic Medical Association on Friday deplored that only 0.71 per cent of the gross national product, amounting to Rs42 million, was being spent on healthcare in Pakistan, demanding the government to increase it by three per cent of the GNP in the coming federal budget.
Speaking at a press conference at the Karachi Press Club, office bearers of the PIMA Karachi Dr Misbah-ul-Aziz, Prof Dr Muhammad Wassey and Dr Abdul Malik said that over 45 per cent of the total allocation for healthcare in Pakistan was provided to PIMS Islamabad and the NICVD Karachi and only 10 per cent was spent on prevention of diseases in the country.
PIMA’s representatives said that the government’s focus in the health sector was mainly on population control instead of basic healthcare facilities and prevention of diseases. It was due to the fact that Pakistan ranked 142 among 177 countries with respect to healthcare facilities.
Giving a detailed briefing on the poor healthcare facilities being provided to Pakistanis, Dr Muhammad Wassey of the Aga Khan University informed that Pakistan had the world's highest infant mortality rate - 90/1000 – while 30 per cent of infants had low birth weight.
He informed that 57 per cent of pregnant women were anaemic, over 70 per cent deliveries were performed by untrained persons, 16 per cent of children died before their first birthdays, and 10 per cent the country’s population was without any healthcare facility.
The PIMA expert said that major diseases and causes of deaths in Pakistan were tuberculosis, hepatitis, with over 10 per cent of the country’s population suffering from them. While malaria, tetanus, kidney impairments, rabies, diabetes and smoking were other major causes of deaths.
“Only Rs15 million was being spent by the government on prevention and treatment of TB and Rs20 million on hepatitis. As for the rest of the diseases, the government only depended on giving advertisements in newspapers and the electronic media,” he deplored.
While there was no government programme for prevention of stroke and rehabilitation of its patients, he added.
He said that in addition to 90,000 registered medical practitioners, there were over 100,000 unregistered doctors and quacks operating in the country.
While the thousands of lady health visitors had only been assigned the task to curb population growth instead of creating awareness among people about common deadly diseases, he stated.
The PIMA experts disclosed that the government spent less money than the revenue it collected from cigarette-manufacturing companies, citing that the Pakistan Tobacco Company alone contributed Rs38 billion last year to the national exchequer.
On the occasion, the PIMA Karachi President, Dr Misbah-ul-Aziz, said that PIMA had sent its budget proposals for the health sector to the ministries of Health and Finance.
He said the association had demanded the government to increase the allocation for healthcare facilities from 0.71 per cent to three percent of the GNP while allocations of the provincial and district governments should be 10 per cent of their budgets.
He said PIMA also demanded of the government to allocate at least Rs30 billion for vaccination against hepatitis and tetanus, Rs1 billion for prevention of TB and malaria, start a national stroke programme, and make clean drinking water available to each and every citizen.
PIMA also demanded of the government to provide lifesaving drugs and antibiotics at highly subsidized rates, free vaccination, regulation of medicine prices, quality control of vaccines and local production of a variety of vaccines.—PPI