PAKISTAN’S health system is trapped in a loop of doom. A localised electrical failure caused the blaze that killed 14 newborns at the Pims nursery, says an inquiry committee’s report about last month’s tragedy in Islamabad. It holds the hospital management responsible for systemic and institutional collapse due to which the fire morphed into a calamity. More specifically, it suspects that either abnormal electrical heating due to excessive current, a high-resistance connection, or another
Child Rights in Focus
KARACHI: Despite the passage of nine days since the murder of 17-year-old Rosham Hussain, his family has yet to bury him, as they insist that they will neither offer his funeral prayers nor lay him to rest until his killers are arrested. The family, along with Rosham’s friends, acquaintances and a large number of the residents, has been holding a sit-in outside the Manghopir police station to demand the arrest of those responsible for his
ISLAMABAD: A parliamentary body on Sep 16 rejected a “flawed” report on the catastrophic fire at the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (Pims) that claimed 14 infant lives as Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif ordered authorities to complete reforms at Pims within three months. The Performance Audit Report found only 39.7 per cent compliance against the acceptable benchmark of 90pc among the indicators assessed. The prime minister was chairing a meeting on a roadmap for improving the hospital,
Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT) Police recovered a newborn safely and detained three women after responding to a reported abduction of the baby from Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS) late on the night of 15 Sep. An official told APP on Wednesday that the Karachi Company Police Station team took immediate action after receiving information that a newborn had allegedly been taken from PIMS Hospital. The police recovered the child safely and took three women into custody
Charsadda police on Sunday claimed to have safely recovered a minor girl who was allegedly abducted at gunpoint and arrested three suspects, including a woman, in connection with the incident. District Police Officer (DPO) Charsadda Rifatullah Khan told a press conference at the City Police Station that Sarderheri police received information on Sept 10 about the abduction of a 15- to 16-year-old girl at gunpoint. A case was registered and an investigation launched immediately.
It is no secret that human life barely holds any value in Karachi, given the fact that every other day brings news of a murder or a death. It is, however, unconscionable even for Karachi that a school becomes a spot that could possibly endanger children’s lives – but this city seems to have no limits on reaching new lows. Five men are dead in Orangi Town, crushed under a boundary wall of a
HYDERABAD: A five-year-old girl was allegedly raped and strangled to death at a seminary in Tando Adam, Sanghar district, with police arresting a 16-year-old student and claiming that he confessed to the killing during initial interrogation. The incident occurred on Friday within the jurisdiction of the City police station after the child, identified as Dua, disappeared following Friday prayers at the Old Tableeghi Markaz. According to her father, Asif Ansari, Dua had accompanied him
The suspension of four doctors and three health workers in Sindh after five rabies deaths in three weeks is an attempt to patch a much more complex problem. The victims, including two young boys aged five and six, died despite being reported to anti-rabies units. This is because the problem is not just a handful of negligent medics, but a broken system. Consider the case of a 13-year-old boy who received a full vaccination
PESHAWAR: A new polio case has been confirmed in Bannu district of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P), taking the number of cases reported in the country this year to four, the Regional Reference Laboratory for Polio Eradication at Islamabad’s National Institute of Health (NIH) said on Friday. The latest case was detected in an eight-month-old child from Union Council Noor of Miryan tehsil in Bannu district, according to officials. The case is the third reported from K-P
LAHORE: A petition has been filed before the Federal Constitutional Court (FCC), seeking directions to shield children under 16 from unrestricted social media use and indecent content on television and other platforms. Two lawyers, Sheraz Zaka and Moin Akhtar, filed the petition at the Lahore registry, with the former identifying himself as an activist and the latter as the father of a minor child. The petitioners argue that Pakistani children are being exposed to
HYDERABAD: Four doctors, a dispenser, a lady health visitor (LHV) and a midwife have been suspended, while explanation letters have been issued to seven hospital heads — including the medical superintendents of Liaquat University Hospital (LUH), Hyderabad, and Tando Allahyar district hospital, as well as the director of the Shahdadpur Institute of Medical Sciences. The health department took the action on the directives of Chief Secretary Asif Hyder Shah, following lapses identified in the
PESHAWAR: Emergency Operation Centre Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has planned to accord priority to high-risk districts in the upcoming nationwide polio vaccination campaign due to consistent emergence of positive environmental samples from Peshawar which is frequented by people from those areas. Some districts bordering Peshawar may not have polio cases or positive samples for a long time but since the provincial capital is positive most of the times, so its bordering areas have also been bracketed