More than 10.4 million children in Pakistan are deprived of basic health care, says Aman Ullah Khan, director, Health for Save the Children, Pakistan. He was addressing the participants of the ninth annual State of the World's Mother Reports' released here on Wednesday.
No doubt the health care situation is really disappointing. And the reason for all the ills remains the poor governance of the human development sector. There are a number of areas especially within the big cities where the people are not having any basic health facilities only because they are not residents of posh areas.
Besides, the government is not keeping a check on the fake practitioners' running clinics in these underprivileged areas. It is of deep concern that after the independence, the government got a lot of international funds to improve the health in the country. Only a slight improvement has been seen at few places. Otherwise, most of the places especially rural and far-flung areas are deprived of basic health facilities.
Dr Aman said that Pakistan ranks 32nd out of 55 priority countries where 55 percent of children under five years are deprived of the basic health care. "There is also a big class discrepancy with 55 percent of the wealthier having access to basic health facilities and only 20 percent of country's poorest children having this access", he said.
He pointed out that Save the Children's mothers index identifies the best and worst countries by looking at child and maternal well being in 146 countries. "Globally, more than 200 million children do not get basic health care, as Sweden takes top position, while Niger takes last place in the ranking", said Aman.
He also said the United States is on 27th position, Pakistan on 69th and India is on 66th position. "Pakistan is not in the bottom 10, which consists of all African countries, but Pakistan ranks poorly against other countries at the similar level of development", he said. He mentioned that Pakistan's poor performance was illustrated by the fact that one in every 74 women dies of pregnancy, while in developed countries only 1 in 7,300 women dies of similar causes.
"This high maternal mortality has multiple causes, but one of the most remarkable is that skilled health personnel attend only 31 percent of births in Pakistan", he said. "A child's chance of celebrating a fifth birthday should not largely depend on the country or community where he or she is born", said Charles MacComa.
The Save the Children president and CEO said that after releasing the report in United States they need a better job of reaching the poorest children with basic health measures like vaccines, antibiotics and skilled care at childbirth.
He said these simple measures were not reaching millions of children under the age of five and determined whether a child lives or dies. "To close the child survival gap and save lives or dies, the report recommends a co-ordinated global effort to train, equip and supply more community health workers, who can reach the poorest, most marginalised communities", said Aman. "On the positive-side, Pakistan is making progress in saving lives through the successful lady health worker programme and efforts should be made to further expand this programme", he said.
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