Daily Times

I am always dreaded of any eventually that could get us caught unaware and unprepared. It was this fear that prompted me to write an eye opening article calling upon the people in power to learn lessons from Coronovirus tragedy that has been causing havoc in human toll and unmitigated sufferings to the huge Chinese population as well threatening others with its fall out devastations. While mourning the heavy death toll, one did ponder if -God forbid-such an horrifying eventuality was to hit Pakistan-what would have been the consequences, how would we have tackled it. I had regretted that despite having crossed 70 years Pakistan as an independent nation, one had yet to have a proper and effective infra-structure for meeting the challenges from natural or un-natural disasters. This refers to latest Gas leakage tragedy in Karachi’s port Keamari.

We have seen how miserably we fail in our relief operations or preparedness to meet challenges offered by seasonal flooding, inclement earthquakes-especially when every year huge amounts are reserved in the budget to meet natural disasters. There is hardly any preparation to minimize the fall out despite having an advance weather forecasting system available at home and ready information flooding the system through satellites. I was in London when last earthquake rocked Pakistan including Islamabad. It decimated entire villages in Azad Kashmir and massive relief operations were required. One remembers how desperately CDA was searching in the private sector giant bull-dozers for excavations into the debris of collapse buildings in the federal capital to carry out the rescue operations from the debris of multi-storied buildings. One recalls how the authorities were desperately hunting for heavy excavators to enable the then President General Pervez Musharraf to put up his mock show of leading the rescue teams. Indeed, it was a slap in the face of CDA that while their machinery was obsolete, a British rescue team did manage to pull out alive from deep down the debris, victims lying buried for days.

In my op-ed in this paper I had mentioned that it was irony that China was at war footing grappling the epidemic. It had astonished the world by building just in few days hospitals that could specifically treat at least one thousand patients at a time-evening providing the afflicted ones beddings in single rooms to quarantine them. As compared to the Chinese operation, Pakistan got fully exposed recently when in Pakistan’s commercial and financial hub and a port town of Karachi with a population of 20 million people, there was gas leak at the Keamari Port that continues to remain mysterious though it has had a death toll of at least 14 with hundreds of people being evicted to safer places to save them from lethal suffocation.

Provincial administration led by its Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah has seen to it that people living in gas leak contaminated area are shifted to bigger and more airy places such as marriage halls and provided food and medical facilities. However, it remains ironic that despite passage of days area of leak remains contaminated, smells toxic. No doubt Chinese have shown us the creditable way to upstage their healthcare system to successfully face the fatal consequences of the tragedy of such a vast magnitude. It seemed nothing short of miracle that the Chinese constructed not one but quite a few hospitals in Wuhan-with several thousand beds, doctors, paramedics and medicines—to meet the challenge. Its performance at Wuhan shows what a great and resilient people Chinese are.

The government has introduced ‘sehat” cards and claims them to be very successful when the actual position is that Pakistan does not have even a rudimentary healthcare system to cater to the needs of country’s large population especially in the rural areas where there are no facilities available

I am sure even the most advance nations in the world would have panicked by such an enormous calamity. It is a nation like the Chinese that have the capacity and will power to meet effectively magnitude of the tragedy. In our case it was not a question of bracing up with all the wherewithal to be ready to face it-but one of free- for- all- business opportunity in importing anti-coronovirus kits and face masks that were previously available at a dime a dozen.

As compared to China that has established dozens of hospitals with thousands of beds in no time, if we look within Pakistan in normal day-to-day condition, our hair would stand at their ends to see fatally sick patients dying on pavements outside government hospitals for want of emergency care. It is a common sight to see sick patients die for want of beds. Women giving birth to their child on a stretcher or even rickshaws are very common. Whatever-we must not also forget the callousness that runs through in our whole healthcare system where money is what makes the mare run. Remember, an in-charge in Anti-Polio Department who made millions by selling outdated anti-polio vaccines only to be known when they backfired on children. Incidentally, the culprit happened to be allegedly PM’s buddy hence Dr Zafar Mirza, his Special Assistant on health, could not have him arrested and punished. One hopes, Dr Mirza is mindful of such miscreants when rumours in the media are that passengers coming from abroad are delayed in giving ‘all clearance’ certificate by airport personnel who only do it when their victims cough some cash to them.

Indeed, it is a most blatant indictment that the very fact that two of the highest VVIP personalities of Pakistan who ruled the country for over 30 years between themselves did not do enough in the healthcare sector to have a few centres of excellence in Medicare so that one could have treatment of serious cases within Pakistan. Not only that, nothing was done improve basic healthcare in the country. Now the government has introduced ‘sehat” cards and claims them to be very successful when the actual position is that Pakistan does not have even a rudimentary healthcare system to cater to the needs of country’s large population especially in the rural areas where there are no facilities available.

It is surely an irony that despite Pakistan being a nuclear country with one of the largest army and galaxy of heavily medalled and richest generals -whenever it is visited by any disaster such as earthquakes/floods/epidemics- it does not have modern firefighting equipment, nor fire tenders that could throw water to higher floors or a first class first aid team to carry out emergency rescue work. Similarly one comes across various cases where Pakistani nationals suffering from chronic heart, lung, cancer or needing transplant of organs-have to seek favours to travel to India for treatment. India, no doubt, can boast of having medicare centres of excellence as good as one finds them in America, UK, Europe or Scandinavian countries. Pakistan does even have iota of such facilities that could match with India except of course Professor Adibul Hasan Rizvi’s SIUT where kidneys are transplanted successfully free and Imran Khan’s SKMH. Remember, both India and Pakistan don’t have fire tenders that could put off fires in Mumbai Taj and Islamabad’s Marriott.

Author is the former High Commissioner of Pakistan to UK and a veteran journalist.