The death of at least 14 newborns at Pims has been mourned across the country. Even now the event begins to fade from newspaper headlines and television reporting, stage by stage. This is the case of every tragedy in the country. We see this regularly after every calamity. The memories of TV news channels are short and no headline lasts too long.
It is the families of the 14 small children who died in the fire who will, of course, live with the grief for the rest of their lives. For the others who have watched from the sidelines, the incident is a moment to mourn. But it will not live on in memory for long. Similar tragedies have happened before this one, and others will almost undoubtedly follow, since it is unlikely that anything significant will be done in the aftermath of the disaster.
There is a reason in these circumstances to look beyond that ill-fated neonatal unit at Pims. The tragedies that are not mourned, not even mentioned, are the other deaths of infants which take place every day in the country. There are no reports, no court cases, no inquiries. In Pakistan, thousands of children lose their lives each month. These are infants aged between 1 day and 28 days. The reasons for the deaths are usually the lack of care and, in many cases, the lack of nourishment available to them. The situation in most district headquarters hospitals and in places where untrained midwives or women working on their own assist in the birth of a child, often in unhealthy conditions, is one of the reasons for these deaths. These factors are rooted in the state’s failure to empower its most vulnerable citizens and provide the opportunities they need to improve their lives and move forward. Even when incubators and other facilities exist, they are often poorly maintained and staff are not trained to use them properly.
Pakistan has the highest neonatal mortality rate amongst most countries in the world. Out of the 194 countries listed by the UN, Pakistan stands in second place on the list of those which carry the highest burden of death alongside South Sudan. Below it is the tiny, impoverished state of Lesotho in Southern Africa.
In Pakistan, people fight wars of their own every day and on a consistent basis. Their wars are against unending poverty, with nothing romantic about the squalor and horrors of life without adequate food and adequate housing. The tragedies of these lives are not reported by the press or covered by the media. Even 80 years after independence, Pakistan has not been able to escape these horrors and as the fifth largest nation in the world, there are many reasons to believe that this should by now have happened. It is worth considering that in South Asia, Pakistan stands behind all its neighbours in terms of neonatal mortality and the rate of infection and illness found amongst children under the age of five. Poor maternal health and nutrition contribute to this.
According to the latest National Nutritional Survey carried out under the supervision of Unicef in 2018, 40 per cent of children aged under five years suffer from stunting or a failure to attain expected height for age. This is often combined with poor mental development. For Pakistan, with 65 per cent of its population aged below 35 years, there are huge implications in this. The lack of development means many of these young people will not be able to achieve what would be expected of them if they had a better start in life and better conditions in which to grow. The fact that they do not will result in more unemployment – and with it, more poverty, more hunger and more crime, which often comes with such factors. This is the reality of life.
The same strategy should then be used as a compass to navigate the world we live in. This does not really happen. For the elite who occupy the upper echelons of society and go about their business from one day to the next with the privilege that they command, there is no real reason to look at the bulk of society. The result is that people live and die without any barriers or any interventions which could perhaps save them from the almost daily calamities that so many families face and must live with in one way or the other.
As we look at what happened at PIMS, we should go beyond the reports into the actual sequence of events and other matters. This should include the lack of spending on health care and the failure to give people access to the specialised care that should be the right of every child born in the country.
This does not happen. We live as has been the case since the time when Pakistan came into being as a nation where too many people are deprived. Other countries have, in the same period, moved far ahead and attained far better patterns of growth and the ability to regulate and improve the lives of their citizens. We as Pakistanis need to consider why this has not happened in our country and how it can be achieved.
There are no hard-and-fast answers. Indeed, there is no immediate remedy. The only remedy lies in reexamining our priorities and viewing security as an issue that also involves securing people’s welfare, rather than simply as an issue of territory and regional tensions with neighbouring countries. Pakistan, after all, has developed a nuclear bomb and excels in other fields. There is every reason to believe it can find the willpower and the ability to turn into reality what should have happened a very long time ago and redirect public policy to improving lives and building the country as a whole rather than leaving it as a place where a few can flourish and grow while the majority continues to suffer.
We should note that tragedies such as Pims often happen to those born without the protection of privilege and wealth. This should be the final message we take home from the flames, smoke and chaos at that NICU. From this point on, we can perhaps give our country a new start in life and new means to find hope for its future. If we cannot achieve this, we are doomed as a country.
The writer is a freelance columnist and former newspaper editor. She can be reached at: [email protected]
