Healthcare: focusing on research (My Letter in Daily Dawn)

COMPARED to developed countries and neighbouring developing countries Pakistan is way behind in terms of healthcare and policies. We have failed to eradicate polio, tuberculosis and tetanus, we are still fighting against diseases like malaria and typhoid, and we always face troubles in controlling epidemics like dengue, congo, and swine flu.
Why are we lagging behind? -- because people in our country are not interested in research to find solutions to such problems.
The reason for our failure can be well understood by reading the world health report 2013 of the WHO, ‘Research for Universal Health Coverage’. This report emphasises the need for continued domestic involvement in research in order to address country-specific needs.
Many case studies have demonstrated how evidence-based research can guide health policy and practice.
Research has become the absolute need of the day. It is part of human nature to look for something new and exciting which will bring a change in the existing conditions.
Results must be published so that healthcare practitioners can improve their practice and give benefits to the mankind.
We are academically poor and way behind the world. This can be assumed from the figures mentioned in the editorial of Journal of Postgraduate Medical Institute 2010 which says that Pakistan has only 67 medical journals in Pakistan, out of which only three are indexed in international journal databases, where more than 5,000 journals are indexed worldwide.
Out of our 67 journals, many have been inactive for some time now, and this may be for many reasons like financial issues and poor academic quality of articles.
The gap in healthcare policies can be solved by giving proper training to healthcare providers on how to research, making them academically strong and encouraging them to research more on our domestic health problems, share the positive results, improve the healthcare practice, and bring the change.
Our government can play a role in bolstering research training and institutions.

DR MUBASHIR HUSSAIN SHAIKH


(published in daily dawn - 30th november 2013)