Patient and non-patient related public health indicators in Pakistan

ABSTRACT

It is a fair assumption that individuals and communities would rather prefer to stay healthy than be sick. On this premise a person or society would strive to maintain health when not sick and try to regain health when struck by sickness or injury. Public health departments all over the world have been assigned various functions of maintaining health, and providing care at individual and public level whenever health status is compromised. Traditionally public health departments have focused on health maintenance of the general population in addition to providing direct-care to the sick or injured poor of society. The health maintenance functions of public health can be either patient related, [immunizations, nutrition, maternal and child health etc.] or non-patient related [sanitation, drinking water safety and air pollution prevention etc.]. Periodic assessment of these patient related and non-patient related needs of the general population, gives an indirect measure of the health status of the population and the performance of public health departments. The assessment includes surveying and data collection on several public health indicators such as infant mortality rate [patient related] and lead levels in air and drinking water [non-patient related]. This paper explores the information available on such public health indicators in Pakistan and comments on the health status of the population. A comparison is made with other countries of the South Asian region. Deficiencies of some of the programs and departments that function to improve the patient related and non-patients related public health indicators in Pakistan, are discussed in this paper. Recommendations have been made in this article to help improve the current standing of these public health indicators in Pakistan