Daily Times

Like many other lessons that Pakistan needs to learn from developed nations of the world, one is the awareness and skills to deal with inevitable and lifetime health conditions. Healthcare facilities in Pakistan are quite limited considering the mounting population, poverty rate and lack of education on basic healthcare particularly in rural areas of Pakistan. In these circumstances, most of the population of Pakistan cannot even think of affording doctors and expensive treatments hence they put a deaf ear to their health issues. Not only this, in rural areas of Pakistan, talking of admitting long term health conditions is considered a taboo and families do not prefer even talking about long term health conditions, let alone accepting them to live with and deal with carefully.

In this scenario, spreading the awareness about long term health conditions is an obligation upon the state as well as the at least for the long term medical conditions that need to be dealt with care and can easily be managed by slightly altering our life styles. One such example of long term health conditions is Congenital Heart Defects (CHD) both in children, called Paediatric Congenital Heart Defects (PCHD) as well as in adults, called Adult Congenital Heart Defects (ACHD). Both of these conditions are being talked about across the world and developed nations are much sensitive to them but unfortunately, Pakistan, despite being carrier of a huge PCHD and ACHD population, neither has any concrete health policies to cope with them nor much advanced and accessible healthcare facilities.

According to Congenital Heart Disease Fund, Pakistan, Report 2017 published by Aga Khan University, Resource Development Department, more than 60,000 babies are born with

Congenital Heart Disease (CHD) each year in Pakistan.Pakistan has one of the highest prevalence rates of CHD in the world, yet it only has four hospitals that can perform surgeries on patients with CHD, the report says. It is also important to know that even if treated medically, according to Adult Congenital Heart Association, USA, such health problems need lifetime care and attention for healthy survival of the survivors.

Therefore, we need to understand that besides enhancing the number of healthcare facilities, improving the quality of healthcare services and healthcare service providers in Pakistan, it is equally important to educateour people about such long term health conditions so that they are able to cope with them more efficiently and effectively.

In Pakistan, besides improving the overall healthcare structure, one way of sensitizing people about long term health conditions is to connect all the survivors together through an association, and then connecting them with healthcare professionals as has been done by many countries including US

The issue of health and well-being has rightly been addressed in goal three of Sustainable Development Goals set by United Nations that talks about good health and well-being and encourages states to take long term as well as short term measures in order to improve life quality of all age groups of population to ensure sustainable development.

In Pakistan, besides improving the overall healthcare structure, one way of sensitizing people about long term health conditions is to connect all the survivors together through an association, and then connecting them with healthcare professionals as has been done by many countries including US. This exercise would help the survivors share their stories and draw power and motivation from each other and also learn some basic healthcare lessons e.g exercise prescriptions for the long term practice, things to do and things to avoid as part of daily routines in order to earn a better life quality.

So far, in Pakistan, no such organization or association of Congenital Heart Defects exists to connect and educate the CHD survivors and therefore people with even minor issues cannot live after a certain age due to negligence and unfocused lifestyle.

In efforts to spread awareness, Adult Congenital Heart Association (ACHA) as well as Paediatric Congenital Heart Association (PCHA) of United States are persistently working to educate CDH survivors and their families by organizing awareness walks, arranging open days,organizing fund raising activities,arranging meet up sessions and doing many other activities to motivate, help as well as educate the survivors and their families. Moreover, US has declared February as the Heart Health Month which is celebrated every year with zeal and zest. Hence in the month of February, every year, the awareness activities are increased manifold.

The government of Pakistan and all the provinces therein must mobilize their health ministries and health departments to collaborate with private sector on this as well as initiate awareness campaigns against such long term health conditions because a lot of lives can be saved by small policy measures which are otherwise wasted because of lack of awareness and sensitization.

Moreover, not only government, but in my opinion, private sector, NGOs, and may be each one of us can play our part to break the taboo and endorse the slogan of ACHA which says “Staying Strong by Staying in care” and the first step to stay in care is talking about it!

The writer is a lawyer, social activist and researcher