Masti Point

The financial conditions that the present government’s policy of corruption has put me in is seeing me defaulting upon my basic financial obligations. There are millions like me – so called white collared people who are finding it immensely difficult to protect their “white collars”. The only people who benefit financially are Ali Baba and his set of forty thieves. The logic I see behind their every move is to loot the country, deposit their assets abroad and then when the end comes they will go foreign shores and live like kings. Not only them but also their next three or four generations will enjoy the loot.
Recently I had to take my mother to hospital to get a burn treated.

Treatment done I was presented a bill for two thousand rupees. These days I am complaining each time I have to make a payment – but strangely enough, I very meekly paid the bill and left. Not to say that I did not think that the bill was exorbitant. It was just that I had no other option to get proper medical treatment. I realized that I was helpless and in a way had money extorted from me. Don’t pay and don’t get the relief. One does not have any place decent to go too so one ends up cutting corners, taking loans and paying for medical treatment. In other words – good medical services in this country are only for the rich.

In an effort to be fair I went to the emergency of the people’s hospital – the Jinnah Hospital – only to see my option which might have been a bit cheaper. The memories I had of Jinnah Hospital were me as an 8 year old child being stitched up without any anesthesia. I recollected the pain. 34 years later – Jinnah Hospital has not changed much. It has changed the location of its emergency but everything else seemed worse than 34 years ago. There were people in critical condition some bleeding profusely thrown on white tiled floors in the most unhygienic of conditions. There were a few doctors fighting hard to serve the injured but they were not in enough numbers to cater immediately to all injured. The inside of the hospital was horrible and dirty with people spilling over from everywhere and “pan peeks” decorating the walls.
Where does a person go then for medical treatment if he or she is not financially well off to pay the expenses of good healthcare? To the government hospital where they tie up psychiatric patients to their beds with chains so that the staff can sleep well without worrying about a patient getting violent or running away. A hospital where there are no doctors to serve you or chemists to give you the “aik number” medicine. And when you find the medicine you realize that taking it will effectively cost you your whole salary. How will you survive if you spend so much on medicine? Might as well die.

We have a constitution which is our supreme law and in which the State has promised us the right to life. It was 1994 that the Supreme Court of Pakistan held that the constitutional right to life means not only to physically live but also to enjoy life. What has the State done to grant us this right?

Karachi has three public hospitals. Civil Hospital, which was made in 1898 but picked up steam in 1945. It has a capacity of 1670 beds. Jinnah Hospital, which was made in 1959 and which is larger than Civil but the number of beds of which is unknown. Abbasi Shaheed Hospital, which was made in 1973 and has 850 beds. A total of approximately 5000 beds.

In 1951 Karachi’s population was 1,137,667 (Source: Government of Pakistan Census Report). 2010 estimate is 13,052,000 (Source: World Urbanization Prospects: The 2007 Revision Population Database). Population grew from 1 million to 13 million – yet the number of public hospitals remained the same and we are left with 5000 beds to cater to 13 million people. Hospitals in the private sector such as Liaquat National, Ziauddin and Agha Khan have played an admirable role but then it is only the rich who can afford the services at these private hospitals.

In the 2011-2012 budget the present government allocated petty cash of Rs. 17 billion for the health sector in the whole of Pakistan. This was 0.7% of the total budget. It is important to note that the millennium development goal is a minimum of 2%. The Sindh government earmarked 6 billion rupees for health in the whole of Sindh. No provision was made for pro-poor vital running health schemes like hepatitis control program, polio eradication, HIV/AIDs, tuberculosis, malaria, dengue eradication and other infectious diseases’ program besides the primary healthcare, maternal and child healthcare program. With no allocations for these programs, we can expect the poor to suffer more.

In the state of affairs that exist on the ground, one feels sheer revulsion when government spokespersons claim that this is a democracy and that the government is doing wonders for the public at large. This is a “dacocracy” with a government of the corrupt, by the corrupt, for the corrupt. There is a saying that a healthy mind lives in a healthy body. With the way things move forward the day is imminent – on the assumption that it has not already come – when it will only be unhealthy minds roaming in the streets of Pakistan.