The Islamic Republic of Pakistan celebrated its Golden Jubilee in 1997, 50 years after the partitioning of United India from the British Raj. For Pakistan (fig 1), this was also a time to evaluate the health and population status of its people. In Pakistan, during the 1940s, population growth rates begin to accelerate as health improvements lengthened life expectancy and birth rates remained hi...

BACKGROUND This paper discusses national programs implemented in India, Pakistan, Malaysia, and Philippines to generate and apply evidence in making informed policy decisions on the approval, pricing, reimbursement and financing of medicines, diagnostics, and medical devices. APPROVAL In all countries, the Ministries of Health are generally responsible for approval of health technologies thro...

My initial contact with Gavin Wright came when I arrived at Yale University from Pakistan in the early summer of 1971 due to the war between Pakistan and India. At the time, I had been a research fellow at the Institute for Development Economics in Karachi as part of a Yale-Ford Foundation project. Ford made a “safety-first” decision to have all Americans return to their country. Gavin was then...

BACKGROUND The public health significance of maternal mental health is well established. Armed conflicts expose populations to events that could have long-term negative consequences for mental health of pregnant women and their children. This study explores the prevalence and associated risk factors for psychological distress of women during pregnancy, including exposure to past conflict-relate...

In India and Pakistan, CVD and diabetes has assumed alarming levels. However,governments in these countries are ill-prepared for coping with this epidemic. This paper reviews the literature for those studies which have addressed the current and foreseen economic and social consequences of CVDs and diabetes in India and Pakistan. This review adopts a societal perspective by incorporating the imp...

There must be few other situations where there are eager purchasers of natural gas (India and Pakistan), willing suppliers of natural gas (Turkmenistan, Iran, Qatar and Oman), and yet, no pipeline. The distances involved are modest, and techno-economic viability appears straightforward. This paper examines in detail the policy, technology, and economics of an overland pipeline supplying natural...

Over the past few decades, a significant change in the nature of employment and family patterns has been observed globally. The objective of this paper is to determine how work requirements affect family by exploring the phenomenon of the work-family conflict (WFC) and how the family demands impinge the work life – the family-work conflict (FWC) by examining the key issues leading to this criti...

Page 1 of 5 Pakistan, politics and polio Sania Nishtar a Heartfile, 1 Park Road, Chak Shahzad, Islamabad, 44000, Pakistan. Correspondence to Sania Nishtar (e-mail: [email protected]). (Submitted: 7 April 2009 – Revised version received: 30 June 2009 – Accepted: 16 July 2009 – Published online: 8 December 2009) The United Nations Secretary General’s concern over the recent resurgence of polio ...

The partition of India has thrown upon the Governments of the two Dominions responsibilities of such urgency that time must elapse before plans for the health of the population can take shape. When these plans come to be formulated the question of priorities is sure to arise. Mental illness did not arouse much medical enthusiasm in India in days gone by; and there (as elsewhere) other forms of ...