City Reporter
Chronic neglect by successive governments towards fundamental human needs, primary healthcare and preventive healthcare strategies including infection control practices explains why Pakistan has failed miserably to show improvement in the health sector. In fact, matters have gone from bad to worse in areas lacking proper sanitation and refuse disposal mechanisms.
These points were raised at a press conference held at the PMA House for the launch of a report titled Health of the Nation. The report highlights the country’s poor health indicators including its high maternal and infant mortality rates, slow progress on stunting and wasting, neglect towards mental health, weak healthcare system and a growing rise in the burden of diseases mainly due to lack of basic facilities, such as supply of clean drinking water, sanitation, primary healthcare services and environmental degradation. “Clean drinking water is not available to 90 per cent of the population. This is the cause of many gastrointestinal infections, hepatitis A and hepatitis E, typhoid, polio (it can spread through drinking water if it’s contaminated with the stool of an infected person) and other diseases.
“Typhoid is now a big problem in Pakistan particularly in Sindh due to antibiotic resistance. This phenomenon is a looming disaster not just for developing countries but also for developed nations,” the report said. The report looks into the factors contributing to antibiotic resistance in local settings and said that there were so many elements instrumental to this menace including quackery, irrational use of antibiotics, spurious drugs, availability of drugs over the counter without prescription, self-medication and the role of pharmaceutical industry offering lucrative deals to doctors against (specific) prescription.
The polio infection, according to the report, remains endemic despite over 100 rounds of vaccination being carried out in the past decade. Pakistan is one of the two remaining countries in the world where polio still exists, the other is Afghanistan.
