Supporting LHWs
THE Lady Health Workers Programme is the only pro-poor initiative in the country today directly delivering critical health services, but LHWs have been designated as a dying cadre in Punjab.…
LHWs’ struggle
How do you deal with deceit, dishonesty and debasement in your day-to-day life? Sounds like an existential question. Substitute the three D’s with a single word, ‘corruption’, and the question…
Revisiting LHW Programme
PAKISTAN’S pre-eminent community health outreach programme — the Lady Health Worker (LHW) Programme — has been around for 30 years. As we celebrate this pearl jubilee anniversary, it behoves policymakers…
The polio story
“SOMETIMES people get very angry and tell us to leave; especially if they are busy with household chores and we are disturbing them. If we insist they begin using abusive…
The other time bomb
Pakistan is a nation focused on the crisis du jour. Crises like ‘climate change, environment and population’ are only mentioned occasionally in the newspapers or soft news morning shows, because…
A broken workforce
On the UN’s Human Development Index, Pakistan occupies a pitiful rank. It perches on one of the lowest rungs on education and health indicators. If our performance in the recent…
Foundation of healthcare
THE foundation of healthcare is primary healthcare. No country has been able to improve its health indicators without strengthening its PHC system. Universal health coverage, which has been our stated…
Beyond the questions
Our politicians are often criticized for raising petty and unimportant questions that do not interest the majority of citizens. They are accused of picking fights with powerful circles of the…
Greater visibility
PAKISTAN ranks only above Iraq and Yemen in the Global Gender Report 2020. Yet the long-discriminated-against Pakistani woman has made much overlooked progress. Conditions are terrible for her but trends,…
Post-Covid pandemic
THE Covid-19 pandemic may have spared many women from directly getting infected, but in many ways it has exacerbated the impact on their sexual and reproductive health. Giving birth already…
