D engue is making headlines with widespread public attention and political response. True that Dengue and its potentially lethal complication, Dengue Hemorrhagic fever should be a national public health concern – as they are. By way of contextualizing however, here is a disease that does not spread from person to person and therefore does […]
Opening the insurance market – the health perspective
T he Economic Coordination Committee of the Cabinet on Wednesday the 27th decided to allow foreign companies to invest in the insurance business in Pakistan on the premise that this would help attract Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). There can be no two opinions about this being a right assumption if the necessary regulatory environment is […]
“Playing” Social Protection with a new stack of cards!
We have a history of starting things denovo in this country. Individually and institutionally, we must scrap past initiatives, create silos, never build on efforts underway and whenever the adage “we have never learnt from the past” is referred to it is often with a negative connotation. Why should the case of social protection be […]
Health in Executive Committee of the National Economic Council (ECNEC)
T he configuration of the four health projects presented to August the 23rd’s Executive Committee of the National Economic Council (ECNEC) meeting raise some broader issues that need to be the substrate of contemporaneous conceptual thinking with reference to health and health sector allocations in Pakistan. Agreed that there can be no generalizations […]
The health and technology nexus in Pakistan – hope or hype
Why does technology get spotlighted in the discourse over health outcomes and the discussion on health sector reform? For the simple reason that health and technology have shared agendas. It is well established that in addition to serving as a sine-qua-non of therapeutics and diagnostics in the medial field, technology can not only reduce health-related […]
Tools for treatment – Scope for using technology in reforming and improving the health sector is immense
W hy does technology get spotlighted in the discourse over health outcomes and the discussion on health sector reform? For the simple reason that health and technology have shared agendas. It is well established that in addition to serving as a sine-qua-non of therapeutics and diagnostics in the medial field, technology can not only reduce […]
Rahim Yar Khan’ health initiative – revisited
Perhaps no other health policy intervention in recent times has been the substrate of a greater controversy compared with restructuring the mode of primary health care service delivery in Rahim Yar Khan (RYK) as part of which the management of Basic Health Units, in twelve districts of the country, was handed over to the Punjab […]
‘Playing health’ with a new stack of cards
T he planet earth’s environmental and ecological transformation is a subject of much ado as are the contemporary concerns around the power dynamics, which will determine the global epicenter economically, militarily and politically over next two to three decades. This is justifiably a subject of critical thinking and planning. But sadly, the implications of this […]
Budget 2006-07 – an ode to health
Flagging a 21.3% increase in the budgetary allocation for health as part of the unprecedented increase in the development expenditure in the fiscal budget of 2006-07, the recital of June 5, 2006 made a reference to health as being a provincial subject. True that health is a provincial subject and true that the provinces […]
The Health Budget 2006 – the policy context
Budget 2006 is just around the corner with an indication that there would, both, be aggregate as well as program-specific enhanced allocations for health. This raises the question of whether these can translate into improved health outcomes over the short term. Here it must be understood that the relationship of health indictors does not necessarily […]