Pakistan

This country in South Asia was formed with the partition of India in 1947. Prior to that, Pakistan had been two parts of British India, West Pakistan being on the western border of India, and East Pakistan, in the east, almost entirely surrounded on land by India—East Pakistan becoming Bangladesh in 1971. The population of Pakistan is 165,804,000 (2004) and there are 57 doctors and 34 nurses per 100,000 people.

During the period of British colonial period, health-care in hospitals for the European population and the wealthy local elite was good, with medical facilities being located in all the cities and most of the towns. The major hospitals were the Mayo Hospital, and the King Edward Medical College, both in Lahore. After independence, there was government pressure to increase the provision of healthcare for all the people in the country, and medical care in the main city in Karachi, the country, as well as in Rawalpindi, and in the new capital Islamabad, has been relatively good, although it still is extremely problematic in remote parts of the country.

The Pakistan Medical Research Council was founded in 1953 to promote research in the fields of medicine and public health in Pakistan, and was reconstituted in 1962. It publishes the quarterly Pakistan Journal of Medical Research. Many large hospitals have now been built throughout Pakistan, staffed by doctors trained overseas and locally, with many universities in Pakistan offering medical courses. The major university in the country is the University of Karachi which has faculties of Pharmacy and Medicine. The Aga Khan University in Karachi, run by the Aga Khan Foundation, has a large Faculty of Health; and the Gomal University at Dera Ismail Khan, in North West Frontier Province, there is a Faculty of Pharmacy. The Pakistan Council for Science and Technology (P.C.S.T.), Islamabad, advises the Pakistan government on science and technology policy, and it works with the National Institute of Health, also based in Islamabad.

Plans to overhaul the national health service of Pakistan started with the Second Five-Year Plan from 1960 until 1965. This continued through to the Eight Five-Year Plan from 1993 until 1998. Many of the medical problems faced by people in Pakistan were concerned with bad hygiene and lack of access to clean drinking water. These included typhoid, cholera, tuberculosis and dysentery. However with improved sanitation, and the provision of clean water to remote villages, these problems have been significantly reduced. However there has been a rise in illicit drug taking and HIV/AIDS. There was also an outbreak of dengue fever in Pakistan in October 2006.

There has been an increasing problem of cancer in Pakistan, partly because of the increase in the age at which people are living. Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, himself died from cancer, but it was not until 1954 that the Cancer Research Institute of Pakistan was established, followed by the founding of the Karachi Cancer Registry. For men, the most common cancers remain lung cancer and oral cancer, with women most susceptible to breast cancer and cervical cancer. Of the many new hospitals which have opened in Pakistan and which treat cancer patients, mention should be made of the Shaukat Khanum [Page 1323]Memorial Cancer Hospital and Research Center established in Lahore by the cricketer Imran Khan who founded it in 1989 in memory of his mother who had died from cancer. It treated its first patients in December 1994.

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