Coronavirus: concern over lack of facilities

LAHORE : The Pakistan Medical Association (PMA) is very much concerned over the poor healthcare system of the country, which even lacks quarantine facilities for treatment of the coronavirus or any other flu strain.

“There is complete lack of quarantine facilities at public hospitals all over Pakistan. We also do not have such facilities even at our airports to quarantine any case because a few rooms allocated at airports lack required facilities to quarantine facilities,” said Dr. SM Qaisar Sajjad, Secretary General, PMA (Centre), in a statement issued here on Saturday.

“The PMA has always highlighted the health issues of the country. We have also offered recommendations and placed a charter of demands for governments to implement and improve the health delivery system in Pakistan but the voice of the PMA always fell on deaf ears,” he added. Regarding the coronavirus, we had earlier demanded to evacuate Pakistani students from China but now after a single suspected case has been kept at a private hospital because of lack of required facilities at public hospitals. In the situation, the students should not be shifted to Pakistan and it is better to keep them in China, because China has a strong health delivery system and if any student suffers from the virus they could be very well managed there. Our sympathies are with the parents but the situation is complex, he added. “We regret that due to lack of facilities in our health department our government could not evacuate our students. Even Bangladesh and India have evacuated their students from Wuhan two days back. We request the government to financially and logistically support all affectees particularly students in China. In future whenever you bring back the students they will have to be kept quarantine. We should prepare ourselves for future to handle such a situation. We have no viral diagnostic facilities throughout the country except one place at Islamabad,” he added.