Daily Times

Germany has been ranked the first in ‘The Good Country Index’ ‘for its contribution to health & wellbeing of humanity across the world”. In a recent message on social media, the German Embassy says that this “ranking reaffirms Germany’s commitment to the promotion of health in Pakistan”. Before engaging in any such activity, Germany should consider that Pakistan’s key health indicators are very grim. International organizations, including the World Health Organization, have time and again pointed out scarcity of doctors and flawed health infrastructure resulting in thousands of preventable deaths in a year. But the problem we here indicate goes underreported by and large. It is about the taboos our media generates about healthy lifestyle, not least among our youth. Youth makes up over 60 percent of our population. Though undocumented, the volume of internal migration is very high, which means much of the most of them have to leave their native towns in search of jobs and education. Away from their homes, they take pride in eating cheap and junk food, promoted by the media in its dramas and ads.

In addition, they take on unhealthy habits of sleeping late, smoking and taking tea excessively as a snobbery – a token of some kind of intellectualism as promoted in the media.  As a result, when they cross 40s, they land into different health troubles and become a burden on our already flawed health infrastructure. Germany has worked well on improving media content in Pakistan and the quality of democracy. Politics and power play are highly overrated subjects on our media. It will be a great service to humanity if world leaders like Germany take an interest in promoting healthy lifestyles in our youth. It needs a lot of media intervention to achieve this goal. But this effort is worth it. Awareness among youth about what they eat and when they eat it is doubly important in an environment where food adulteration goes on unchecked as a matter of routine and health hazards like smog and haze are taken for political point-scoring. Germany is among the countries that have a proven capability of taking on this media initiative in addition to improving key health indicators. Pakistan should learn lessons from Germany and make people’s health a wealth. *