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    Healthcare Sector of Pakistan

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    Bilal Afzal
    Pakistan has historically spent low amounts on healthcare, allocating only $45 per capita compared to minimum recommendations of $86-$271. Public sector spending is just $14 per capita, with the rest coming from private sources. This has led to high out-of-pocket costs for citizens of around 60%. Bed availability has also remained low at around 1 bed per 1000 people due to reduced spending and high setup costs. However, COVID-19 has increased government priority and investment in the sector, with the health budget increasing 11% and development budget 49.6%, giving hope that conditions may improve.

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    Healthcare Sector of Pakistan

    Uploaded by

    Bilal Afzal
    17 views1 page
    Pakistan has historically spent low amounts on healthcare, allocating only $45 per capita compared to minimum recommendations of $86-$271. Public sector spending is just $14 per capita, with the rest coming from private sources. This has led to high out-of-pocket costs for citizens of around 60%. Bed availability has also remained low at around 1 bed per 1000 people due to reduced spending and high setup costs. However, COVID-19 has increased government priority and investment in the sector, with the health budget increasing 11% and development budget 49.6%, giving hope that conditions may improve.

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    Healthcare sector of Pakistan

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    Pakistan has historically spent low amounts on healthcare, allocating only $45 per capita compared to minimum recommendations of $86-$271. Public sector spending is just $14 per capita, with the rest coming from private sources. This has led to high out-of-pocket costs for citizens of around 60%. Bed availability has also remained low at around 1 bed per 1000 people due to reduced spending and high setup costs. However, COVID-19 has increased government priority and investment in the sector, with the health budget increasing 11% and development budget 49.6%, giving hope that conditions may improve.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    17 views1 page

    Healthcare Sector of Pakistan

    Uploaded by

    Bilal Afzal
    Pakistan has historically spent low amounts on healthcare, allocating only $45 per capita compared to minimum recommendations of $86-$271. Public sector spending is just $14 per capita, with the rest coming from private sources. This has led to high out-of-pocket costs for citizens of around 60%. Bed availability has also remained low at around 1 bed per 1000 people due to reduced spending and high setup costs. However, COVID-19 has increased government priority and investment in the sector, with the health budget increasing 11% and development budget 49.6%, giving hope that conditions may improve.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
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    Healthcare sector of Pakistan

    Historically, Pakistan has spent low in the healthcare sector. To put things into perspective, according
    to estimates done in 2017-18, Pakistan spent $45 per person on health, while Iran spent $484 and Qatar
    spent $1,716 per capita. According to the High-Level Taskforce on Innovative International Financing
    for Health Systems (2012), the minimum spending per capita on health is an average of $86 per person.
    A more recent estimate from 2017, including investments in the health system, sets the bar at $271 per
    person.

    This figure of $86 is recommended as minimum public-sector spending whereas the above-mentioned
    $45 per capita in Pakistan is the total health expenditure. A breakdown of the total healthcare spending
    reveals that only $14 is spend by the public sector while the rest ($31) comes from private spending and
    external sources. Because of this, there are high out-of-pocket expenditures i.e. around 60% owing to
    healthcare.

    The state of the healthcare system of Pakistan can be explained by the following graph which denotes
    the beds available per 1000 people:

    From the graph it can be seen that the beds/1000 have remained fairly constant over the past 2 decades
    owing to the reduced spending in the sector and high setup costs for the private sector. Additionally,
    other factors that contribute to the meager state of the sector are brain drain (people moving oversees
    for better opportunities), less involvement by females in the sector (although 30% of medical school
    graduates are females) and inconsistent public spending / government support of the sector.

    However, not all hope is lost. Covid has have a positive impact on the state of the industry with the
    government investing heavily in the sector. New tertiary health centers have been set up to reduce load
    from the hospitals. Additionally, the federal budget 2021-22 has seen an increase of 11% compared to
    last year. The health budget has gone up from around Rs. 25.5 billion to Rs. 28.3 billion (still only 0.4pc
    of the total budget). The federal development budget (PSDP) has seen an increase of 49.6% i.e. from
    Rs.14.5 billion in 2020-21 to Rs21.7 billion, including Rs5.6bn for the Sehat Sahulat Programme. One
    of the government priorities for the current fiscal year is impact mitigation of Covid-19. Rs100bn is
    dedicated only for Covid-19 related expenditures i.e. almost four times the budget for routine healthcare.

    I am hopeful that the healthcare sector witnesses a turn-around to become an asset for the country and
    its citizens.

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