Public hospitals

A recent perception survey by Gallup Pakistan revealed that the standard of public hospitals has deteriorated over the last nine years; those living in the rural areas, of course, reported poorer levels of treatment at public hospitals as compared to their urban counterparts.
A confluence of reasons may be behind the contempt for public hospitals - including but not limited to shortage of adequately trained staff, nepotism and corruption, ghost doctors and ghostly hospitals, inferior quality and fake drugs, complete disregard for hygiene and so on and so forth.
Central to these reasons is the reign of politics in public hospitals and public medical colleges and the lack of government spending.
Despite a nearly three-fold increase in public sector expenditure since 2001, spending on health remains abysmally low - and has declined as a percentage of GDP.
According to the Economic Survey of Pakistan 2010, total public sector expenditure on health, for both the federal as well as provincial governments combined, in the last fiscal year was estimated around 0.54 percent of GDP, which is amongst the lowest of all other countries at a similar income level.
In purchasing power parity terms, expenditure on health per capita in Pakistan is as low as $64, compared with $81 in Indonesia, $109 in India and $183 in Vietnam, according to the Human Development Report 2010.
A multi-pronged strategy must be adopted to change this dynamic around. And since the government is understandably short of finances for one reason or another, perhaps coordination with the private sector, in line with the philosophy of public private partnership, should be streamlined.
In this context, the CSR activities of various corporations as well as the works of private charity organisations can be also coordinated by the government, to achieve the desired results in targeted areas.
For a country witnessing a population growth rate of 2.1 percent, which is the highest in the region despite a high infant mortality rate, the deteriorating state of public hospitals and basic health services should be ringing alarm bells in governance quarters.