Doctors, where art thou?
Pakistan has a count of ‘athara crore awaam’ (thank you, dear politicians, for continuously repeating this in the television talk shows) while the doctor/patient ratio was a mere 1:1,800 in 2010 – that means a single doctor catered to the medical woes of 1,800 people, and the situation has not seen much improvement ever since. The constitution of Pakistan clearly describes that the state has a responsibility, “To provide basic necessities of life, such as, food, clothing, housing, education and medical relief, for all citizens, irrespective of sex, caste, creed or race.” But where does the problem lie? It lies in the fact that ...
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Zardari khappay!
Over the past few days, we have witnessed extreme media frenzy over the departure of President Asif Ali Zardari to Dubai owing to medical reasons. The president’s health has invited a plethora of responses, some of which are listed below: rajennair After putting Pakistan in the ICU, Zardari gets himself admitted in the ICU AB Agha Just going to read Zardari conspiracy theories to cheer me up I guess. Oh I do wish him well in health btw. sufisal If Zardari’s billions can’t buy him a stronger heart, coherence or respect why take revenge on democracy? omarulhaq Well, we certainly got a day’s worth of hope, right? Saad_Haroon Zardari went to Dubai ...
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Helping Punjab’s medical students
One needs to score at least 82 per cent marks in Intermediate exams and then pass an entry test to gain admission into any public medical college in Punjab. This ensures that those who do eventually study medicine are among the best and brightest in the province. However, the fate of some 950 such intelligent students is hanging in the balance as the Punjab government didn’t take approval from the Pakistan Medical and Dental Council (PMDC) before admitting these students to medical schools. Last year, four new public medical colleges – in Sialkot, Dera Ghazi Khan, Sahiwal and Gujranwala – were ...
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Accidents are not entertainment
It was a sunny afternoon in Paris, and my family and I were just stepping out of the glorious Sacré-Coeur basilica when our discussion on Romano-Byzantine architecture was cut short by the sight of an injured man lying on the stairs. I wasn’t precisely sure what had happened to him. All I knew was that he was breathing heavily and that there was blood streaming down his leg. The terrace was filled with tourists and worshipers, but only three people were sitting next to this wounded gentleman: one of them was a security officer; the second one, a female tourist who ...
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CIA, polio drives and responsibility
In April 2011 I was made part of a World Health Organisation (WHO) team to monitor effectiveness of a community vaccination drive carried in different districts of Karachi. I spent the day with my team visiting a set of clusters in the Baldia Town area of the city. At the cost of sounding alarmist, I’d regard it as my firsthand experience of observing the enormity of community vaccination in Pakistan – it almost felt undoable. I was seeing the face of Karachi I had never seen before – rural, ethnic, rugged and a whole lot more like Afghanistan on CNN. We ...
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Battling polio: If only our children were vaccinated
Three-year-old Ahmad asked his mother, Razia why his foot looked different from his 5-year-old brother Sadiq. His mother said: “God made you this way.” Ahmad, my maid’s cousin’s son probably wondered who God was and if he could ask Him to change his foot so that he could at least walk on his own, if not play with Sadiq. Later, Razia asked her husband to try and get help from the shehar wala doctors. Their family saved for two months to come to Peshawar from the small district of Torghar, where they met with a local doctor. Ahmad was diagnosed with a ...
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Saving lives should not be this hard
I was enjoying a wonderful meal at the new food street on the pier with my family last week when I heard people gasp as two men carried another young man to the green sidewalk. They dropped him and disappeared. My first thought was this man had fallen into the water – but I was wrong. I rushed to assess the casualty. Eager spectators had gathered around the young man – some of them instructing others to perform maneuvers which were extremely contraindicated in the given situation. I pushed through the crowd only to find the young man hyperventilating, followed ...
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For summer interns, a crash course in becoming a daakter saab
‘You have many career options. They all end in medicine.’ This is a joke from a viral Facebook group called Desitips, which as the name suggests imparts advice to ‘Desis’. The joke is not far off the mark: the ‘Daakter’ [doctor] is a goal coveted by many ambitious parents, borne by their unsuspecting children. The Daakter is also my medical student of a cousin, who once visited straight from university to throw a bone at me. “It’s called the Humerus bone!” she yelled excitedly, while I searched for disinfectant. No one lives and breathes medical science more than her. Then ...
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“Please help, I need some blood”
Have you ever had to look for blood? It is not a pleasant experience. Every day, in my clinical practice, I see patients and their families looking for blood. From heart surgery to C-Section, when patients are about to undergo a surgical procedure, their friends and family go through the painful exercise of finding blood that might be needed. And, these of course are the people who plan ahead. For some reason, patients are completely unprepared. When a loved one is in a car accident, there has been no time to arrange for blood beforehand. Or, for that matter ...
Read Full PostIncompetent healers, uncaring doctors
Ok, I give up. I know I said that doctors care. And they do. At least most of them do. But then there are some who are either too incompetent or too ignorant or just too damn arrogant to admit that they don’t know what the heck is really going on with their patient. I saw a patient yesterday who had seen at least five different doctors in Bahawalpur and Multan in the last two months. After months of looking for answers for his poor health, all he had for a diagnosis was Anaemia (low Haemoglobin.) Someone performed an ...
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