Attainment of universal health coverage in Pakistan: issues, opportunities and challenges on December 13, 2019As we celebrate the International Universal Health Coverage Day of the United Nations today, we need to be cognizant of certain facts in our country’ context. Health policy development took off with a slow start after the creation of Pakistan. In fact, during the first decade of our existence, we did not go beyond convening […]
Mr Jinnah and his secret battle against tuberculosis on September 9, 2019As Mohammad Ali Jinnah walked into the Viceregal Lodge in Delhi to meet its new tenant, Louis Francis Albert Victor Nicholas Mountbatten, on April 5, 1947, history will always record that he was haughty and disdainful. Earl Mountbatten of Burma, as he was called, was a cousin of the King of England, and had only […]
Tuberculosis control in Pakistan: Part-II on March 21, 2019An important and unprecedented development on TB control in recent times was the first-ever high level United Nations General Assembly meeting on tuberculosis held in September 2017 where world leaders pledged to increase overall global investments for ending TB at least $13 billion annually by 2022 and seek $2 billion for closing the estimated $1.3 […]
Tuberculosis control in Pakistan: Part-I on March 20, 2019Tuberculosis (TB) is spread by an airborne microorganism calledMycobacterium Tuberculosis. World TB Day is actually the remembrance of the discovery of that organism 137 years ago and an occasion to remind ourselves of its serious ramifications not just in our national context but globally. The disease was virtually untreatable in the absence of any drugs […]
World AIDS Day 2018 — what Pakistan needs to know and do on December 3, 2018As we observe World AIDS Day 2018, we need to be cognizant of certain facts. Currently 37 million people are living with Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) globally, 22 million of them are accessing antiretroviral therapy and roughly half of those are responding to treatment with virus suppression, yet close to a million people die every […]
World Children’s Day 2018 on November 21, 2018World Children’s Day affords us an invaluable opportunity to impress upon policymakers the importance of fulfilling child rights, seriously evaluate how our children are doing in Pakistan and devise the appropriate strategies in our national context. We do so in the belief that we are investing towards our future. The theme of World Children’s Day […]
Ensuring health and human rights for ageing population on November 9, 2018The term ‘senior citizen’ commonly denotes an old and usually retired person and is usually employed to determine the eligibility for certain benefits available to the age group ranging from 60-65 years and beyond. Currently, after increasing at an unprecedented pace, the number of persons aged 60 and over is close to one billion worldwide, […]
The story of a principled judge — Justice M R Kayani remembered 55 years after his sudden death on December 8, 2017The seemingly easy task of a judge in interpreting the law has gradually become extremely complex, troublesome and even something of a torture, especially for those with a conscience in our national context. When I was born, Pakistan had only two provinces – one of them is gone. However, we still have four provinces and […]
Dina Jinnah Wadia — an obituary with some reminiscences on November 4, 2017Dina Jinnah Wadia passed away on Thursday a few months following her 98th birthday. Like her illustrious father, she may have inherited and matched her father’s self- control, deep reserve and constant struggle for secrecy concerning her private life in its entirety, leaving us gasping for some information. It is yet possible to put together […]