Pakistan has no proper healthcare setup in place to guarantee the betterment of the countrymen. Healthcare is the most neglected field, and it is a combination of expensive private hospitals, ghost public hospitals in rural areas, irregulated private clinics, unregistered doctors, quack doctors, and spiritual peers.
T.B. was a disease that had been eradicated from Pakistan with the effort of doctors and government jointly. Now it is again here and spreading rapidly. The same is the case with Polio and many other physical and mental diseases.
Queues in Indian Embassy depict that how many Pakistanis are desirous to go to India for medical treatment daily. What is happening in Pakistan?
If we talk about professions like accountants, engineers and law practitioners we can promptly say that these professionals spend maximum time of their day in reading because they think this would increase their proficiency. Unfortunately, the same is not the case with our doctors who neither like to read the books nor have time to enhance their proficiency.
This tragedy is deep-rooted. We should look at the fee structure of our medical colleges. In private medical colleges, it comes to Rs. 55000/month. This is a mere fee, remaining expanses beside it includes books, hostel, and transportation charges. One can imagine the high expenditure a doctor’s family has to bear.
Therefore, after becoming a doctor, the first thing the person does is to earn as much as he can to recover the money spent on education. They keep practicing without going into the depth of the disease and they are only good at prescribing and diagnosing basic diseases. Medical colleges are taking a very high amount from their students in terms of fee and in return, they are teaching them substandard education.
This is one aspect, the other aspect is more painful and that is the low standard of medical education. A few days back, A Canadian Pakistani was interviewed who was working in Canada as a salesperson and interestingly, he did MBBS from Pakistan. He was not good at his profession therefore, he was doing an odd job. If that gentleman would have been in Pakistan, he would have been playing with the health of the Pakistanis.
The owners of private hospitals in Pakistan are so strong that they could not be brought to book any other way. We should not leave the health of our people at the mercy of a few people whose focus is to earn the money by hook or by crook without thinking that human life is the most important and expensive thing in the world.
The government should look into this highly serious issue without wasting the time as if this thing is not addressed immediately, health conditions in the country will remain the way they are. The government needs to deal with an iron hand with the skimming medical education who charge high and provide substandard education. General awareness must be created among the masses through electronic, paper and social media to resolve the longlasting issue of healthcare being the most neglected field.
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