In Pakistan, the most important aspect of wellbeing remains the most neglected. Ten years after this crisis was last written about, the diagnosis has barely changed: successive governments, civil and military, elected and caretaker, have not made health a political priority. Budget season still comes and goes with health treated as an afterthought, squeezed between debt servicing and defence. The media still surges around specific crises — a dengue outbreak, a flood-borne cholera scare, another polio case in a country that is now one of only two left on earth where the disease remains endemic — while the deeper causes of institutional collapse go largely undiscussed.

The result is health indicators that have improved only marginally. Pakistan’s infant mortality rate now stands at roughly 53 per 1,000 births, down from 66 a decade ago but still far behind India’s and nowhere close to Sri Lanka’s. The maternal mortality ratio remains around 155 per 100,000 live births, little changed over the past decade and still among the worst in South Asia. Life expectancy has risen only slightly, while Pakistan’s Human Development Index ranking has continued to slide, even as the population has crossed 250 million, placing ever greater strain on an already over-stretched health........

© Pakistan Observer