Karachi: Pakistan Islamic Medical Association (PIMA) has expressed deep concern over the Government’s attitude regarding handling the third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. Providing health facilities to the people was the government’s primary responsibility, Dr Khubaib Shahid, Central President PIMA said in a phone interview from Lahore today. “The supervision of import of corona vaccine was the most important need of the time, but unfortunately the whole process of importing and distributing vaccines at the government level was not only slow but also highly unorganised.”
He said permitting the private sector to import Corona vaccines and its uncontrolled price and a slowdown in the vaccination process, adding to the general public’s problems. Authorities must ensure the import of vaccines by the Govt sector alone, instead of the private sector, the continuation of its campaign to vaccinate health workers and speed up the vaccination process.
On the other hand, proper legislation was needed from day one to keep the vaccine within the common person’s purchasing power and prevent black marketing. It already seems that artificial scarcity had been produced, but the government took concrete steps to halt the process in this regard. The vaccine price introduced in Pakistan was often higher than the fixed price of the vaccine in the global market.
He said that the government should import vaccines directly and provide them to the people at affordable prices. Still, He regretted it seemed that the government was not taking the whole issue seriously—the reason why the private sector was forcing the government to make arbitrary decisions.
He pointed out that many doctors and medical professionals had not been vaccinated even today, exposing them to danger. PIMA, again, demanded that the government speed up the vaccine process because, in the current situation, it could take many years for the entire population to get vaccinated. He also demanded the vaccination process be free of all pressures, political and regional affiliations, personal interests, etc. He also pointed out that people were not taking precautions, due to which the increasing number of corona patients was putting pressure on national health facilities. Space inwards was running out, and it was high time the public showed responsibility and seriousness lest the situation gets out of control. Islam also teaches us to avail the modern scientific facility to save life and society from avoidable harm.
