This is apropos a Business Recorder op-ed “Healthcare: the healing touch can’t be felt through high-tech gear” carried by the newspaper yesterday. The writer, Zia Ul Islam Zuberi, has explained the changing healthcare scene in a fascinating manner.

Globally, healthcare systems aren’t what they used to be. That the writer is spot on insofar as his observations or memories are concerned is a fact. According to him, for example, “It has been a long journey from the days of the friendly neighbourhood doctor to the gleaming well-equipped hospitals of today. Patients and diseases have multiplied manifold.

Sometimes I remember the warmth and concern of doctors of yester years and their ability to diagnose diseases with just a hand on my pulse.”

Although writer’s nostalgia is not at all misplaced nor has he overcome by acute sentimental longing for a period in the past, he has to accept the fact that change is inevitable. Winston Churchill, for example, had famously said that “To improve is to change, to be perfect is to change often”.

Last but not least, the present-day healthcare systems have led to increasing global life expecting by more than six years between 2000 and 2019 – from 66.8 years to 73.4 years.

In sum, the modern healthcare system has both its pros and cons but it has more advantages than disadvantages.

A medical practitioner,

New York, US

Copyright Business Recorder, 2022