Karachi: The Ministry of National Health Services, Regulations and Coordination will lead a Healthy Pakistan Network, bringing public, private and NGO-run health facilities together to ease patients’ suffering, ministry officials pledged at the concluding session of the 23rd Health Asia conference.
The pledge came at the close of the three-day 23rd Health Asia International Exhibition and Conferences at the Karachi Expo Centre, inaugurated by Federal Health Minister Syed Mustafa Kamal, who also attended the concluding session on Saturday.
The event, organised by Ecommerce Gateway Pakistan, is one of the country’s largest annual healthcare gatherings, drawing regulators, hospitals, NGOs, industry representatives and delegates from abroad.
The idea of the network was discussed at the 1st Stakeholders Moot on Health NGOs, held under the theme “Breaking Silos: Collaborate to Transform Healthcare in Pakistan.” Leaders of the country’s leading health NGOs vowed to break out of working in silos and instead work together, sharing lessons from their own experience and jointly supporting weaker organisations to widen healthcare access for ordinary Pakistanis.
The Healthy Pakistan Network concept was presented by Muhammad Arshad Qaimkhani, CEO of the Prime Minister Sehat Card under the Prime Minister’s National Health Programme. He said stronger healthcare organisations should support weaker ones, and should also offer their expertise to public-sector hospitals such as the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS) to help make them safer for patients.
The session was chaired by Prof Dr Abdul Bari Khan, founder and chief executive of the Indus Hospital and Health Network, and attended by Alkhidmat Foundation President Prof Dr Hafeez-ur-Rehman, Patients’ Aid Foundation leaders Mushtaq Chapra and Prof Dr Tariq Mehmood, HealthRAB and Diabetic Association of Pakistan chief Prof Abdul Basit, Child Life Foundation CEO Ahson Rabbani, neurologist Prof Muhammad Wasay, Prof Tipu Sultan, Pakistan Medical Association Secretary General Dr Abdul Ghafoor Shoro, PIMA’s Dr Ahmed Salman Gauhri, Prevention of Blindness Trust’s Dr Misbah-ul-Aziz, Prof Iqbal Afridi of HealthRAB and the Pakistan Psychiatric Society, and Health Asia organiser Dr Zakiuddin Ahmed. International speakers from the UK, US and the Middle East also attended.
The three-day exhibition featured 26 conferences, seminars and workshops, spread across patient safety, diabetes, digital health, public health priorities, artificial intelligence, emergency medicine, medical tourism, healthcare accreditation, cyberbiosecurity, midwifery, mental health, cardiology, cardiac surgery, gynaecology and radiology, besides sessions on 2D barcoding, functional medicine and biomedical engineering. More than 600 exhibitor booths were set up across five halls at the Expo Centre.
At a separate conference on boosting local medical device manufacturing, Mustafa Kamal questioned the 18 percent tax on imported medical equipment and pledged government support for Pakistani manufacturers, saying local production could initially save foreign exchange and, in the long run, help the country earn from exports. He said the ministry and the Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan (DRAP) were working to make device registration fully digital within 21 days.
Prof Dr Syed Shahid Noor, chairman of the Saman-e-Shifa Foundation which organised the device conference, said Pakistan imported medical devices worth nearly three billion dollars every year despite having the capacity to manufacture many of them locally. He called for a National Medical Device Policy, including a minimum procurement quota for Pakistani-made, DRAP-approved devices in government and military hospitals.
A separate conference on pharmaceutical marketing was told by the DRAP officials that major drug companies had begun submitting details of their promotional spending to the regulator under the regulator’s Ethical Marketing to Healthcare Professionals Rules, 2021, with officials saying the goal was to keep patient welfare, not sales, at the centre of medicine promotion.
The event also hosted the 3rd National Health Awards, where DRAP chief executive Dr Obaidullah, Qaimkhani, Aga Khan University Hospital CEO Dr Farhat Abbas, Prof. Jamal Raza, Prof. Abdul Basit and several hospital leaders, researchers and digital-health innovators were honoured, along with two senior health journalists recognised for their coverage of the sector.
Dr Zakiuddin Ahmed, organiser of Health Asia and chief executive of Ecommerce Gateway Pakistan, said the exhibition, held since 2004, had grown into one of the country’s leading platforms connecting regulators, healthcare providers, industry and international investors, and stressed that healthcare could not improve without stronger collaboration among all stakeholders.
In his concluding remarks, Mustafa Kamal said the government remained committed to reforms that made healthcare more accessible and technology-driven, and urged public and private stakeholders to turn the pledges made at the conference into concrete action on the ground.