Beheaded before breath
Beheaded before breath
Haseeb ur Rehman
Editor's Blog

Health sector has, beyond any doubt, become a lucrative business for not only health professionals but also for non-professional business class. Cluster of hospital on every nook and cranny of this tinny city,

Health sector has, beyond any doubt, become a lucrative business for not only health professionals but also for non-professional business class. Cluster of hospital on every nook and cranny of this tinny city,

Quetta, speaks volumes about these interests. Despite taking non-practising allowances from government, many doctors are seen working in their clinics in the evening.

Many even escape their duty hours to reach their clinics for minting as much money as they can by milking the poor patients. The story doesn’t end here as pharmaceutical companies are also as active as the health professionals, and of course non-professionals.

Many instances have been reported where doctors prescribe tests that are not required, medicines that are not essentially for killing the diseases such as multi-vitamins of various kinds and visits that are not necessary. The poor patients take the doctors’ prescription as a word written from Divine and keep on taking as much unnecessary medicines as prescribed to further destroy their health.

However, a news that poured onto social media pages first and later reported on mainstream media from Muslim Bagh was equally shocking and depressing for the barbarity shown by the health professionals for satiating their lust.

The heart wrenching incident took place in Muslim Bagh where a lady doctor during a delivery case ripped apart a baby’s head from the body, leaving the body within the laboring lady’s womb.

Perhaps this must not be the only one of its kind. Countless babies and mothers lose their lives in the hands of untrained doctors owing to reasons that are many and varied, ranging from lack of facilities to the non-commitment of the doctors, health managers and policy makers.

Here a question arises that where and to whom should a common man complain to? As in the above mentioned case, the lady doctor herself was the Deputy District Health Officer who should have been performing her duty in the government hospital but she was away hundreds of miles from District Headquarter in Tehsil Muslim Bagh to run her lucrative business.

Balochistan is a province which stretches at a large area but in terms of planning and development it lags behind the other provinces of Pakistan. The government hospitals, either visited in the provincial capital or at any remote district, present a pathetic look. Often doctors are absent,

hygienic conditions are deplorable. Such sorry state of affairs compel the patients to rush to private health facilities in the provincial capital.

This is evidenced by long traffic jams in front of Hospitals. From Patel Road to Zarghoon Road the road is jam-packed with vehicles from all across the province with ailing humanity in the hope for acquiring health facilities. Similarly, Jinnah roads Faiz Muhammad Street,

Old Pishin Stop and many other locations present a similar dejecting look where one professional doctor at least examines as many as 120 patients. How much does he pay to state from his earnings is only for tax collecting authorities to answer.

The Hospitals built on these roads are all essentially large plazas and not hospital which lack boundary walls. Without a proper boundary walls, the patients admitted in the hospital experience a on-the-road like sleeping for all the unfortunate days they have to spend in the hospitals. Moreover, many of the hospitals lack even car-parking.

The causes of all this mismanagement leads to only one cause that is corruption. It may not be corruption in monetary terms in many cases in but also moral degradation of the society as a whole. The society is undergoing a moral crisis which is only producing money making machines and not essentially human beings, be them managers or professionals.

It is high time that everyone of us did some introspection to set the things on right track or else slide into an inferno of our own creation.