Pakistan

(8 Jun 2009) 1. Wide exterior of Mardan hospital 2. Close-up sign 3. People visiting patients' ward 4. Close-up of newborn baby's face, flies on face 5. Patient Zeenat holding her baby 6. Pan from broken window to patient lying on bed 7. Wide of female ward 8. Dirty, damaged beds 9. Close-up rusted side table 10. Close-up sign at door to operating theatre 11. Various inside operating theatre 12. SOUNDBITE: (Pashto) Shad Nawaz, Hospital worker: "You have seen yourself the condition of this hall. Those who come here healthy with these patients also get ill due to the filthy environment." 13. Various of dirty washroom and toilet 14. Wide of male ward 15. Patients including one with injured leg 16. Close-up of dirty waste basket 17. Man eating banana 18. Man distributing food from bucket in ward 19. Laboratory sign 20. Various of laboratory 21. SOUNDBITE: (Urdu) Sharafat Ullah Yousaf Zai, Hospital dispenser: "When there's a rush of so many patients in the building over the last 12 years and you don't do the repair work, what do you expect its condition to be? The are also not enough staff and authorities have not paid attention to it for the last 12 years. They have not carried out any repair work, and that's the main reason that the condition is like this." 22. Wide of patients ward in Mardan Hospital STORYLINE: Health officials say Pakistan's rundown health care system is near collapse, bringing yet more instability to a country already in turmoil. Hospitals have been overwhelmed by more than two (m) million refugees from the mountainous northwest, where the army is battling Taliban insurgents. The crisis has exhausted doctors, used up limited supplies of medicines and buried hospitals in a mountain of red tape as they try to get money and medicine for the crisis. One patient at Mardan hospital who gave her name as Zeenat, rested on a rusted steel bed covered in a dirty blue blanket. The incision from her Caesarean section now septic. Her baby was born five weeks premature. She came into the world at the end of a painful six-hour drive on a creaky old bus that passed through a battlefield before arriving at the hospital. There was no electricity and not enough fuel for an incubator to feed oxygen into her tiny lungs. The outpatient unit at Mardan's 213-bed district hospital used to see 100 people a day before the anti-Taliban war. Now it is up to an average of 500 a day. The government has allocated one (m) million rupees (12,500 US dollars) for medicine for the refugees, but doctors say it will be months before the refugees see any because of bureaucratic hurdles attached to the money. Pakistan's health care system is loaded with grim statistics, beginning with an annual budget of less than 150 (m) million US dollars this year. The government says it plans a 56 percent increase next year, bringing the budget to 300 (m) million US dollars. By contrast, Pakistan's defence budget last year came to 3.45 (b) billion US dollars, and is expected to reach 3.65 (b) billion next year. More grim statistics: A new doctor to the government service is paid 120 US dollars a month, with an additional 16.50 US dollars housing allowance. There are only 12 doctors to every 10-thousand people in Pakistan and 10 hospital beds to every 10-thousand people, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO). That compares to 22 doctors and more than 30 hospital beds in the United States. International charities have provided medicines and field hospitals in refugee camps, but only about 20 percent of the two (m) million refugees are in camps. The rest are scattered throughout the frontier province, as well as other provinces in Pakistan. You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/youtube/8f182fe8cc82f08520db8ccf9bf301fc Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork

• published: 23 Jul 2015
• views: 774