As defined by the World Health Organization (WHO), eHealth is the latest development in health that ensures cost-effective and secure use of information and communication technologies in promoting and supporting health and its related fields. However, eHealth is a general term; of its four distinct components, Mobile Health (mHealth) i.e., provision of health services and […]
The role of the private sector in moving towards universal coverage
Meet Majid. This 15 year old boy is the primary earner for his family in Pakistan. Majid was hit by a tractor, leaving him out of a job, with no money for an operation, and a starving family. More than 120 million people in Pakistan pay out of pocket for needed health care services. As […]
Harnessing Innovation for Universal Health Coverage
Universal Health Coverage (UHC) is gaining traction as an umbrella goal of international health development, championed by the Millennium Development Goals campaign and the United Nations, but despite broad-based support for the principals underlying UHC, the road to implementation as a social policy faces numerous challenges. Pakistan’s health equity fund model, Heartfile Health Financing (HHF), […]
The boy with the bruised lip
Ali seemed very shy. He didn’t make eye contact with the Heartfile verifier—or perhaps it was his swollen and badly bruised lip, which made him conscious. Throughout the conversation between our verifier and his mother, his gaze remained lowered, as if knowing that something is terribly wrong, and that he is responsible for it. Perhaps […]
Gender Inequality in Emerging Markets
Fifty prominent leaders from around the world including Heartfile President, Dr Sania Nishtar, recently gathered at Green Templeton College Oxford for a symposium on Gender Inequality in Emerging Markets. The symposium explored the consequences of some sobering facts: that almost every culture is scarred by the perverted belief that women are innately or circumstantially inferior […]
High Level Dialogue on Health in the Post 2015 Development Agenda
It was as if the High-Level Dialogue on Health in the post-2015 Development Agenda was convened in Botswana to make a point—a country, which uses diamonds for development. Through consistent economic policies, the country has developed its mining sector, which has generated the fiscal space for investments in public services, including health—a perfect example of inter-sectoral action, health in all policies, the […]
Fight against NCDs gains traction with publication of latest Lancet report
NCDs – including cardiovascular disease, chronic respiratory disease, cancer and diabetes – are today one of the main killers and causes of disability, not only in the developed world, but increasingly in low and middle income countries. In Pakistan’s case where over 70 percent of the 180 million population pay for healthcare directly from their […]
Mukhtiaran Bibi’s story
Mukhtiaran Bibi is a sixty-year old diabetic patient suffering from high blood pressure. Her case is a prime example of how poverty and social inequality and exclusion can be detrimental for patients in Pakistan living in such circumstances. Over the years, her condition has deteriorated, so much so that she requires a permanent pace-maker to […]
Universal Children’s Day – A reality check
November 20 has been marked by the United Nations as Universal Children’s Day to promote awareness and well being of children worldwide. Historically, on this day in 1959, the Declaration of the Rights of the Child was signed and the Convention of the Rights of the Child was also signed on this day in 1989. A young […]
Polio update
Despite massive investment and high level political commitment, Pakistan still risks being the last remaining reservoir of polio virus transmission in the world. Our articles and statements in the media and in other academic journals on this issue can be read below: