Words offer the means to meaning, and for those who will listen, the enunciation of truth. And the truth is, there is something terribly wrong with this country I dare to say , someone said no everything is wrong but I thought Nay . If everything is wrong then it’s a paradox and then things are right in other direction as black and white are not colors but shades but gray is a color
This month , month of January , the first month of 2012 is unlike other months because three incidents made it different . Different in a way that we out of our busy lives , discussed some trivial matter on a coffee table or social media network status and gave away 30 second of our precious time .
Unfortunate death of the Child Prodigy , Stampede resulting death of three girls in a concert and death of dozens ( 100 ) patients admitted in hospital due to some medicines marketed as life saving drugs . These three misfortunate events has something in common : One has to die in my home land to be a hero or someone to be remembered , a tradition of martyrdom is now required to jog our minds for few second . But this is not the story my story starts events before that .
While working as a Physician in a tertiary care hospital emergency for two years , in a provincial capital , it was an evident fact that we all knew . Medicines given to the patients were not only sub standard but even most of the time not even medicine and how casually we all acknowledge the fact that vials probably has water in them . The sad demise of 100 people after using aspirin and some basic non toxic medicines shocked me but later left many questions . What I was thinking as a doctor , when I was giving these medicines to the patients in Govt free dispensary , I asked myself how naïve I would be if I was not foreseeing some incident even bigger than this . Who is responsible , the Pharmaceutical Company selling poison , our good governance of Punjab claiming free treatment or hospital administration buying and passing these tenders . Answer was always there and it is even more crystal clear now . there are many people responsible for this , some more than others but truth be told , if you are looking for a guilty , you need to look into a mirror .
It is me a Pakistani who think a bad thing can happen to other guy and forget that for someone else I am the other guy . I tell my children to lie and then expect they will not cheat. I close my eyes at every brutality of myself and others and then expect it will not hunt down my own family . I spread the word and ideology of hate and then believe it will never ruin my own life . I support every injustice and show indifference to every evil and yet claim someone else for havoc .
I asked a friend now what will happen ? May be a crack down and shut down of few companies, fist full of rupees to the families of deceased by our honorable CM , some committee headed by some tyrant to look into the matter , to make an example may be few will be thrown to the jail and then what will happen , same day same night , I , the Pakistani will become indifferent to everything which is going wrong in this country from religious oppression to moral corruption . I will wait silently for my same , very same fate hiding the very next turn and become part of that martyrdom which defines my existing society .
Honesty , Love , Fairness, justice, and freedom are more than words, they are perspectives. So if you've seen nothing, if the crimes of yourself and myself remain unknown to everyone then our time has come .
Pakistan Zindabaad
Completely agree. We need to learn the cost of "free".
ReplyDeletechorr yaar... This is not going to solve the problem. The problem lies with the policy makers who have no idea about what they are doing because this is not their field. And unfortunately, people from healthcare who get to have their say in policy making are equally ignorant and they dont have courage to stand up to the politicians and the bureaucracy when they make a wrong decision. I am not against the free medicines. I think this is a very good thing but this has to be monitored.
ReplyDeleteThe problem to this situation is that hospitals should have pharmacists who should have more responsibility than just restocking the medications. They should also be responsible for checking the manufacturing dates, expiry dates and batch numbers and which batch of whatever medication was issued to any particular group of patients. Also, there should be randomized audits of the drug supply that govt hospitals receive. The audit should not only include the quality, but also the quantity of medication in that preparation. Last time I check, govt sends the initial samples from purchase to PCSIR labs to see if, for example, a vial of ceftriaxone actually contains ceftriaxone. But PCSIR labs dont check the quantity to see if a vial of 1gm ceftriaxone actually contains 1 gm of ceftriaxone or not. That is the major problem. Because almost all batches of ceftriaxone will contain ceftriaxone but I think the quantity will be a lot less. But there is no check on that because this is not the legal requirement at the moment. And all the doctors always whinging about the quality of medicines. But I wonder if it has ever occurred to them that qualitatively the sample is okie but QUANTITATIVELY samples are not good. Only then we can solve such problems.
And now, honestly, you and I sitting here in front of the computers cannot solve this issue because we have no say in decision making and implementing of the decisions. This is the wrong policy makers who have no clue about these things. So I am expecting more and more such things to happen in the future. This is just one case highlighted by the media. There are other things which just pass under the radar !!
i agree "our time has come"...i ve never been this hopeless but u r right may be we r too naive to foresee...when things were bad we never thought it could be worse...now i cant find a solution,i cannot foresee any betterment in any respect be it our morals or religious issues =(
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