Special Report
In honor of Independence Day 2020 and the last 73 years of Pakistan’s history for nation-building, Dawaai is offering a 19.47% discount on all medicines across its platforms. The discount can be availed till the end of August and applies to nationwide orders. This is one of the many ways Dawaai is moving towards achieving affordable access to quality healthcare, across the country.
Dawaai is Pakistan’s first and largest eHealth platform, providing complete healthcare solutions from doctor consultations to lab diagnostics, maintaining full patient history as well. Motivated by their vision of universal healthcare in Pakistan, the team at Dawaai is working to see a Pakistan where the healthcare industry is accountable and responsive to the needs of the people, irrespective of socio-economic differences.
As a developing nation subject to complex socio-economic challenges, Pakistan is yet to achieve provision of quality health services across the country. The fifth most populous nation in the world, Pakistan has a majority youth population of over 220 million, growing at two percent annually. While Pakistan is rapidly urbanizing, currently 65 percent of the population is rural, and many communities live in remote areas with limited access to basic services like healthcare and education. Such conditions perpetuate rampant poverty and the inability of individuals to progress or improve their quality of living.
Another significant barrier to accessing authentic healthcare across the country is the lack of standardized provision of healthcare to all regions. As a provincial subject, the quality of healthcare provided within each province (and subsequently, cities and districts) vary greatly. Affluent provinces contributing more to the GDP receive higher budgets and therefore are able to reinvest in their communities. Conversely, historically unproductive or marginalized areas receive a smaller share of the budget and are less able to reform basic human rights infrastructure, like healthcare provision. According to a 2015 report by the Government of Pakistan, public sector spending on healthcare in Pakistan is USD9.31 per capita, while private sector spending is USD24.80 per capita.
Other contributors hindering access to quality healthcare include widespread corruption, prevalence of counterfeit drugs, and low literacy levels. According to the 2017 Transparency International report, Pakistan ranked 117/180 countries and its corruption score was 32/100 (0 means most corrupt and 100 means highly clean). Another report by Transparency International claimed that the health sector continues to be the third most corrupt state department in Pakistan, a ranking it first achieved in 2009, rising from seventh position. According to the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF), Pakistan has a 78.8 per 1000 children under 5 years of age mortality rate.
Currently, Pakistan’s doctor:patient ratio is approximately 1:1000, while the doctor:nurse ratio is 1:2.7, both significantly lower than WHO recommendations. These conditions are exacerbated by limited budget allocation at the federal level and lack of uniform service delivery at the provincial level. Exposing the fissures in healthcare systems around the globe, the spread of COVID-19 has brought healthcare provision to the forefront of the global development agenda.
As governments and businesses around the world pivot towards investments in healthcare, the Pakistani market too, has seen a transformative shift with not only government digitalizing health services but new players in telehealth like Dvago joining incumbents like Sehat and Dawaai. Along with the potential gains healthtech offers, there need to be comprehensive regulations and strong quality checks guiding this industry across the board to ensure consumer protection. As many new companies join the bandwagon, a look at the global and local best practices in telehealth could lend insight into developing more responsible healthcare.
Harnessing the power of technology and leveraging the 78 million internet users in Pakistan, Dawaai uses its website and smartphone application to minimize barriers to health services, providing citizens quality healthcare from the comfort of their home. Priding itself on authenticity, Dawaai is Pakistan’s first and only eHealth platform to be globally recognized as a reliable and secure merchant.
The certification, by LegitScript, demonstrates that the business maintains quality assurance standards, provides accurate information and authentic medicine to patients, and is a secure platform for digital payments, protecting user data. In order to secure a LegitScript certification, businesses undergo a company-wide evaluation of its processes across functions. This extends to validity of prescriptions processed, medicine handling and delivery, maintaining patient privacy etc. The seal of approval ensures that Dawaai operates transparently, safeguarding patients from fraud. Trusted by Google, Facebook, Mastercard, and Visa, the certification also guarantees that Dawaai’s advertisements are also authentic.
Positioning itself as a user-centric business with a focus on patient well-being, Dawaaimaintains a team of medical professionals that regularly publish informative content on Dawaai’s blog and social media, conduct live sessions on various health issues in Pakistan, and offer chat and video consultations to app-users completely free of cost.
Considering the coronavirus pandemic and the subsequent demand for health services, Dawaai launched a new product i.e. Dawaai FAST that guarantees 2-hour delivery in certain areas. The company has also partnered with CHS labs so users can schedule at-home checkups by CHS’s mobile diagnostic labs. Responding to concerns about Pakistan being at the brink of a mental health crisis (studies show that 75 percent of Pakistani adults feel distress/anxiety caused primarily by factors linked to COVID-19), Dawaai has partnered with Taskeen so users can access an emergency mental health helpline, in addition to Dawaai’s existing mental health services.
The platform is also a compounding pharmacy. The role of a compounding pharmacy is to make customized medicine for patients with special needs that cannot be fulfilled by commercial or mass produced medicine. Patient needs may be unmet due to many reasons including market shortage of a medicine critical for treatment, specific allergies or reactions to drugs available in the market, or even the inability of small children to swallow largeand/or bitter pills.
Founder Furqan Kidwai believes that universal quality healthcare is not a privilege but an inherent human right which, if enabled with technology, can be realized as a reality. This is why, he says, Dawaai does not operate solely as a business focused on profits but as a complete healthcare management platform transforming the way patients interact with the healthcare system. Creating access to authentic products and fact-based content, Dawaai is facilitating informed decision-making and shifting power back into the hands of the user. “Our team believes in creating value for our users. Whether or not they buy from us, we hope that our platform allows people to make better decisions about the healthcare needs of themselves and their loved ones.”
—He calls this the Dawaai Experience.
