ludUO

incidents leading to deaths due to substandard and fake drugs. The federal
government adopted the Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan Act (DRAP)
2012 in November to tackle the situation and to prevent future accidents. The
law is aimed at preventing the sale of fake, sub-standard and unregistered
medicines and to prevent hoarding of medicines. It also regulates the
manufacturing, storage, sale and advertisement of drugs. The authority has
been designed along the lines of similar authorities in the US and Canada and
aims to protect the interests of patients, pharmaceutical industry and authority
officials. In addition to a CEO, the authority would consist of 13 directors
appointed by the federal government.
Rescue 1122
The Rescue 1122 service was established in the Punjab province prior to
2008 and has consistently provided excellent emergency assistance and rescue
services throughout the largest province of the country. The service has
infrastructure in all 36 districts of the province. According to its official website,
the rescue service had saved over 1.7 million lives by the end of 2012 with an
average response time of seven minutes. These included over 620,000 road
traffic accidents, over 860,000 medical emergencies, 40,000 fire emergencies,
3,500 building collapse, over 50,000 incidents of crime, 3,500 drowning and
716 blasts/ explosions. The failure to substantially expand this service outside
the urban centres and to other provinces shows either incompetence or perhaps
how politics plays a critical and subversive role in provision of healthcare.
Recommendations
1. Budgetary allocation for the health sector needs to be increased to at
least 2.5% of GDP.
2. Decentralization and de-politicization of health governance is critical
to fixing systemic problems. Primary healthcare should be prioritized with
emphasis on immunization programmes, provision of safe drinking water and
sewerage systems.
3. Security and a safe environment must be provided to lady health workers
so that they can carry out immunization campaigns and create awareness about
population planning.
4. The Drug Regulatory Authority needs to work vigilantly in order to
avoid casualties due to usage of fake, substandard and unregistered drugs.
5. A strategy needs to be evolved to achieve all health-related MDGs
including maternal, neonatal, infant and child mortality; women’s reproductive
245
State of Human Rights in 2012