Health sector ‘criminally ignored’

LAHORE: Shocked by the meager budgetary allocation of Rs40 billion both for health and education sectors in the fiscal year 2011-12, medical associations and experts termed it a ‘major blunder’ on the part of the federal government.
They said the government did not even touch the pro-poor vital running health schemes like hepatitis control programme, polio eradication, HIV/AIDs, tuberculosis, malaria, dengue eradication and other infectious diseases’ programmes besides the primary healthcare, maternal and child healthcare programme showing the apathy of the government.
Most of country’s population belonging to lower and middle classes was suffering from several infectious diseases.
Medical experts believed that the budgetary allocation for health announced by the federal finance minister was nearly 15 per cent less than that of the last year.
Medical Teachers Association’s Punjab president Prof Dr Javed Akram outrightly rejected the health budgetary proposal saying this was the biggest joke the federal government had played in ‘untimely session’ to the poor of the country.
He said the motherland had continuously been challenged by epidemics and communicable and non-communicable diseases.
“The prevalence of hypertension in Pakistan has risen to 50 per cent while the health sector is struggling with the epidemic of dengue, hepatitis and several other communicable diseases.”
He said “the budgetary proposal of Rs40 billion for the year 2011-12 for health and education sectors is mere a peanut.”
“Health and education sectors are meant to provide relief to the common man and it seems that legislators are not interested
in the welfare of health and education of the poor”, he said.
Dr Akram demanded a minimum of two per cent of the GDP to be spent on the health sector which was the only way to provide relief to the deprived people of the country.
He expressed his utter disappointment that not a single penny had been allocated in the current proposal for the prevention of diseases.
Regarding the taxation on milk powder meant for infants, he said this mode of infant feeding was generally used by the poor to provide nourishment to the growing child at an affordable price in a hygienic way.
Dr Akram warned that the MTA Punjab would lead a long march of all healthcare providers to the Parliament House if the budget allocation for health was not reviewed.
Pakistan Medical Association’s Punjab chapter president Prof Dr Ashraf Nizami said the proposed budget allocation for health showed that the health sector was not the priority of the government.
He also expressed his disquiet for ignoring necessary and life-saving health schemes in budgetary allocations saying that the TB was 5.1 per cent of the total diseases burden in the country.
“Pakistan ranks at eight in 22 “high burden” countries of TB and at the top on the polio list in the region”, he said.
He, however, hailed the decision of decreasing excise duty on some antibiotic medicines to make them affordable for poor patients.
Dr Shahid Malik, an expert on health issues, said if budgetary allocations for the health sector were calculated, the per head contribution would not be more than 25 paisa.
He said there was still confusion about the eight running health programmes, including polio eradication scheme, as nobody knew who would run or finance these initiatives because the federal government had not allocated any amount in this regard.