Pandemic Panic In Pakistan:
Last week, Zen Tafnish's family moved him from hospital to hospital, trying to find a bed for his 86-year-old grandfather. He had a coveted 19 and was struggling to breathe. "We were helpless, begging,"
Eventually, Tafnish's uncle called a powerful friend in the army, who admitted his grandfather to a government hospital near the Pakistani capital, Islamabad. Tafneesh said the hospital initially stopped him, claiming he had no place. The provided bed was probably reserved for health workers who contract the virus.
Samar Fakhr, a government-run surgeon at the Khyber Teaching Hospital in the northern Pakistani province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
The recent increase in Covid 19 - which the government introduced in late May after ending its weeks-long lockdown - is rife in the country. Pakistan now has the highest number of new cases in the world every day: 5,358 on Thursday, June 18. The total number of cases is 160,118 - and is expected to exceed one million by the end of July.
Criticizing the government:
And after weeks of assurances from authorities that the situation is largely under control, a letter from the World Health Organization fears that the health system in Punjab, the country's most populous province, could collapse if the government No immediate action taken. But officials say the health system is not under pressure and the problem is that patients are coming to special hospitals, overwhelming them.
However, the WHO letter echoed that a dozen doctors in government hospitals across Pakistan told NPR: Are They are afraid to buy equipment and medicine until they themselves become ill and die in disproportionate numbers. He says angry relatives are also being attacked because of frustration over the lack of facilities.
"It's a very frustrating situation." Says Fakhr. "Government hospitals are in a quagmire, and the capacity they have is not enough." She says her hospital has 63 coveted 19 beds but works in an area of millions.
In Pakistan, the world's fifth most populous country, the response to COVID-19 has always been difficult. A permanent lockdown was a threat of economic catastrophe, widespread poverty and even unrest.
But critics say Pakistan's epidemic is due to the government's brutality in some cases. "There are aspects of the answer that beggars believe in," said Musharraf Zaidi, a government think tank and columnist and director of Tabdalib. "One of the main goals of public policy was to prevent the collapse of the public health system" - and it didn't happen - because, he says, "the prime minister's sentiments".
Prime Minister Imran Khan has argued against the lockdown, saying it has a devastating effect on millions of Pakistan's poor, whose incomes have been depleted since the country's massive shutdown from mid-March to the end of May. ۔ At a time when citizens are preparing to celebrate Eid al-Fitr on the occasion of a four-day public holiday in a strong Muslim country.
Fakhr and others expressed concern in a June 7 WHO letter leaked to the media. He told Dr. Yasmeen Rashid, Minister of Health, Punjab, Pakistan's most populous province with a population of over 100 million, "while maintaining the provision of essential health services while reducing the risk of extinction of the health system." Enforce temporary, local locks to keep up. "
The WHO letter states that 24% of the Pakistanis tested in Cove 19 were positive. He said the positive rate should not exceed 5%, which would suggest that disease transmission is under control. It said Pakistan's ability to identify, diagnose, isolate and care for COVID-19 patients was "weak".
(Neither the federal government nor WHO officials have responded to the numerous interview requests.)
Nine days after the letter made headlines, the government said it was imposing lockdowns in areas of 20 cities where the disease was spreading rapidly.
Still, the health minister, Rashid, who is from Khan's political party, blamed citizens for spreading the disease. "This is a nation [of people] that doesn't listen," Rashid said in an interview Monday. "I don't think anyone is as illiterate as we are." Rashid apologized for the comments after widespread criticism.
So far, a doctor at a government hospital says he is short of medicine and oxygen for his patients. Dr. Amara Khalid from Mayo Hospital in Lahore, Pakistan's second largest city
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