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Too many patients, too little space.
per 1,000 children remain serious concerns. The high mortality figures are
largely due to poor diet, water-borne diseases and malnutrition. Maternal
mortality rate (MMR) at 276 deaths per 100,000 live births is still too high and
is unlikely to be reduced to 140 by 2015 as per the MDG. Contraceptive
prevalence rate (CPR) is 30 percent which needs to be increased to 55 percent
by 2015, while total fertility rate (TFR) is 4.1 live births per woman which
needs to be reduced to 2.1. In Balochistan, MMR is 785 per 100,000 live
births, CPR is 14 percent, while TFR is 4.1. This appalling situation has as
much to do with insufficient allocation and injudicious use of the allocated
money as it does with lack of education and awareness among the people.
Water sanitation
Water sanitation and hygiene is an overarching theme in the healthcare
challenges in Pakistan. It is very significant primarily because it has a direct
co-relation with a remarkably large number of diseases. According to reports,
incidence of more than 10 percent of the diseases could be prevented with
improvements to water, sanitation and hygiene and better water resource
management. The burden of water-related diseases falls disproportionately on
the poor and particularly on children under five, with 30 percent of deaths of
these children attributable to inadequate or poor access to clean water and
absence of sanitation.
The benefits of water and sanitation have remained insufficiently
documented in Pakistan and no meaningful effort for public awareness on the
issue is being made. There is a distinctly low political and development priority
for water issues and in sub-optimal levels of investment in water infrastructures.
Mental health
Pakistan inherited the Lunacy Act 1912 which was largely ceremonial in
235
State of Human Rights in 2012