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Thursday, July 16, 2009

Failure Analysis of Primary Health Care in Pakistan & Recommendations for Change
By Muhammad Junaid | 4572 Views | 6 Comments |

| Health

Failure Analysis of Primary Health Care in Pakistan & Recommendations for Change

Author: M. Asad Khan, MD

Primary health care is defined as

"essential health care based on practical, scientifically sound and socially acceptable methods and technology made universally accessible to individuals and families in the community through their full participation and at a cost that the community and the country can afford to maintain at every stage of their development in the spirit of self-determination".

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Comments

By Maan @ Friday, July 17, 2009 9:32 PM | (Maan)

Excellent and comprehensive analysis of the primary health care system in Pakistan, its major problems, and proposals for solutions. This should be adapted as the official position of PTI on primary healthcare.

I was glad to see that Dr. Asad included some discussion of alternative, herbal, and natural medicines in this document. I have a big collection of books on these and have read a lot in this area. I rarely get sick and very rarely need to go to a doctor. In the past twenty years, I only have gone to a doctor three times. Perhaps we can collaborate on a proposal for the use of alternative and herbal medicines in the health care system of Pakistan.

A great number of the most highly educated people in the US have switched to herbal and alternative medicines because in most illnesses they are very effective and do not cause any of the very serious negative side effects that the conventional western medicines cause. In the US, Dr. Andrew Weil is a big advocate of herbal and alternative medicines. After completing his medical training at one of the best medical colleges in the world at Harvard University, he traveled the world and also acquired knowledge of alternative and herbal medicines. He has written many books and also gives seminars to educate the American and Western doctors on herbal and alternative treatments. You can google search information about him. His advice is to first try herbal and alternative medicines for most illnesses. His experience is that they work in most cases. Only at a later stage and for certain type of illnesses-like the ones that require surgery-he recommends the resort to western medicine.

I think there are enormous potentials and possibilities in the field of development and treatment in the area of alternative and herbal medicines in Pakistan. One great thing would be that if people are minimally educated about the use of these medicines, they can then grow their own or buy them very cheap from other growers. Herbal and alternative medicine doctors could train a large number of technicians who can then work in the villages.

Our ancestors discovered the medicinal properties of herbs through thousands of years of observation, experimentation, and selection. It was a different kind of science that involved very long periods and incomparably more observations, experimentation, and selection than those of the modern science. It is unfortunate that our people, especially the "educated ones", have developed such an inferiority complex that they ignore these medicines and rely overwhelmingly on the western medicines, while in the west, as stated above, the opposite is happening, i-e., the most educated people are switching to herbal and alternative medicines!

Let us communicate about this further.

Fazal Rahman Email: [email protected]

By Muneer Ahmad Kasri @ Wednesday, December 09, 2009 9:28 AM | (muneerkasri)

There should be a law to regularise doctors regarding there practice and charges.

By cefspan @ Wednesday, October 19, 2011 7:13 AM | (cefspan)

What we need is a Health Reform , Major Health Reforms . For example , Different laboratories charge you different prices for same tests . REASON?

There isn't any legeslation . More over , Once u sign a consent , even if u die of a reaction , its your fault , not the doctor's .

Its not so in other countries . Doctors ka board bethta hae , comitte decide krti hae wether a doctor is guilty or not .

In every street , every town , people are running private clinics, without any check......

SO , what we need is health reforms.

By squreshi77 @ Tuesday, November 15, 2011 1:05 PM | (squreshi77)

Health Care should be free at the time of contact as National Health Service in UK. Doctors should be accountable like anybody else by a regulatory body in Pakistan.

By dr humayun shahzad @ Monday, January 02, 2012 5:48 PM | (dochumayun)

HEALTH PROFESSION IS NO LONGER A PROFESSION IN PAKISTAN.ITS A PROFITABLE BUSINESS. WE DRS ARE THE BIGGEST QUACKS....WE DO UNNECESSARY SURGERIES FOR EVERY PAIN ABDOMEN BY LABELLING IT APPENDICITIS ...JUST FOR THE SAKE OF MONEY, AND WE DO CAESERIAN SECTIONS EVEN WHEN THE WOMEN CAN DELIVER NORMALLY, AND VENDORS SELL DRUGS ON BICYCLES......WE NEED RADICAL CHANGE,ALONGWITH ACCOUNTABILITY.

By Khan Aijaz @ Thursday, January 05, 2012 7:22 AM | (Revolucion)

AoA! It is a good effort to summarize the literature. However, in my view time has come when we must start thinking of uprooting the vices and seeding in the evidence-based health care in Pakistan. Malpractice and quackery (needs a re-definition in Pakistan's context) patient;s safety is of paramount importance. Healthcare need to be safe, accessible and available. It must be a public service (NHS in the UK) and would be possible if corruption is tackled with iron hands as a general (to evenly distribute tax money to healthcare) and specifically from top to bottom among health professionals.

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