Health In Pakistan

Priority diseases

Most common and lethal diseases in Pakistan include:

• Acute respiratory infection (51%): Among the victims of ARI, most vulnerable are children whose immune systems have been weakened by malnutrition. In 1990,National ARI Control Programme was started in order to reduce the mortality concerned with pneumonia and other respiratory diseases. In following three years, death rates among victims under age of five in Islamabad had been reduced to half. In 2006, there were 16,056,000 reported cases of ARI, out of which 25.6% were children under age of five.

• Viral hepatitis (7.5%): Viral Hepatitis, particularly that caused by types B and C are major epidemics in Pakistan with nearly 12 million individuals infected with either of the virus. The main cause remains massive overuse of therapeutic injections and reuse of syringes during these injections in the private sector healthcare.
• Malaria (16%): It is a problem faced by the lower-class people in Pakistan. The unsanitary conditions and stagnant water bodies in the rural areas and city slums provide excellent breeding grounds for mosquitoes. Use of nets and mosquito repellents is becoming more common. A programme initiated by the government aims to bring down malarial incidence below 0.01% by the year 2011. In Pakistan, malarial incidence reaches its peak in September. 1000 million people have died from Malaria since Pakistan came into being till December 2012. In 2006, there were around 4,390,000 new reported cases of fever.
• Diarrhea (15%): There were around 4,500,000 reported cases in 2006, 14% of which were children under the age of five.
• Dysentery (8%) and Scabies (7%)
• Others: goitre, hepatitis and tuberculosis

Infectious diseases

Infectious diseases in Pakistan by proportion (2006)

Controllable diseases

• Cholera: As of 2006, there were a total of 4,610 cases of suspected cholera. However, the floods of 2010 suggested that cholera transmission may be more prevalent than previously understood. Furthermore, research from the Aga Khan University suggests that cholera may account for a quarter of all childhood diarrhea in some parts of rural Sindh.
• Dengue fever: An outbreak of dengue fever occurred in October 2006 in Pakistan. Several deaths occurred due to misdiagnosis, late treatment and lack of awareness in the local population. But overall, steps were taken to kill vectors for the fever and the disease was controlled later, with minimal casualties.
• Measles: As of 2008, there were a total of 441 reported cases of measles in Pakistan.
• Meningococcal meningitis: As of 2006, there were a total of 724 suspected cases of Meningococcal meningitis.

Poliomyelitis

Main article: Poliomyelitis in Pakistan

Pakistan is one of the few countries in which poliomyelitis has not been eradicated. As of 2008, there were a total of 89 reported cases of polio in Pakistan.^[4] Polio cases may be on an increase. The year 2010 saw an increase in the number of cases as well as identification of polio from new locations. Experts from the national program and the WHO felt that the new cases identified from southern Punjab and northern Sindh may have resulted from importation of infections from other locations in Pakistan. Locations in FATA and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa remain hosts for year-round persistence of infection and environmental sampling by the national program, and WHO suggests that polio remains endemic in many other parts of the country.

HIV/AIDS

Main article: HIV/AIDS in Pakistan

The AIDS epidemic is well established and may even be expanding in Pakistan. Risk factors are high rates of commercial sex and non-marital sex, high levels of therapeutic injections (often with non-sterile equipment), and low use of condoms The former National AIDS Control Programme (it was devolved with the Health Ministry) and the UNAIDS state that there are an estimated 97,000 HIV positive individuals in Pakistan. However, these figures are based on dated opinions and inaccurate assumptions; and are inconsistent with available national surveillance data which suggest that the overall number may closer to 40,000

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Pakistan Armed Forces پاک مُسَلّح افواج

Pakistan Armed Forces  پاک مُسَلّح افواج‎, Musallah Afwaj-e-Pakistan) are the military forces of Pakistan. They are the seventh largest in the world in terms of active military personnel. The armed forces comprise three main inter–services branches: Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines, together with the number of paramilitary forces and the Strategic Plans Division forces. Chain of command of the military is organized under the Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee alongside chiefs of staff of army, navy, and the air force. All of the branches work together during operations and joint missions under the Joint Staff HQ.

Since 1962, the military has had close military relations with China, working jointly to develop the JF-17, the K-8, and other weapons systems. As of 2013 China is the largest foreign supplier of military equipment to Pakistan.Both nations also cooperate on development of nuclear and space technology programs. Their armies have a schedule for organizing joint military exercises. The military also maintains close military relations with the United States, which gave Pakistan major non-NATO ally status in 2004. Pakistan gets the bulk of its military equipment from local domestic suppliers, China, and the United States.

The armed forces were formed in 1947 when Pakistan became independent from the British Empire. Since then, the armed forces have played a decisive role in the modern history of Pakistan, fighting major wars with India in 1947, 1965 and 1971, and on several occasions seizing control of the civilian government to restore order in the country. Border clashes with Afghanistan led to the creation of paramilitary forces to deal with civil unrest and secure border areas. In 2010, the military had approximately 617,000 personnel on active duty, with 513,000 in the reserves, 304,000 in the paramilitary forces, and approximately 20,000 serving in the Strategic Plans Division forces, giving a total of almost 1,451,000. The armed forces have a large pool of volunteers and as such, conscription is not, and has never been needed.

The Pakistan Armed Forces are the best organized institution in the country, and are highly respected in civil society. Since the founding of Pakistan, the military has played a key role in holding the state together, promoting a feeling of nationhood and providing a bastion of selfless service. In Addition, the Pakistan Armed Forces are the largest contributors to United Nations peacekeeping efforts, with more than 10,000 personnel deployed overseas in 2007. Other foreign deployments have consisted of Pakistani military personnel serving as military advisers in African and Arab countries. The Pakistani military has maintained combat divisions and brigade-strength presences in some of the Arab countries during the Arab-Israeli Wars, and the first Gulf War to help the Coalition, as well as the Somalian and Bosnian conflicts.

Members and officials of Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee

Inter-Service appointment	Four-star tier and official	Inter-Service branch	Tenure (hierarchy by date of appointment)
Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee	General Rashad Mahmood	Pakistan Army	27 November 2013
Chief of Air Staff	Air Chief Marshal Sohail Aman	Pakistan Air Force	19 March 2015
Chief of Army Staff	General Raheel Sharif	Pakistan Army	29 November 2013
Chief of Naval Staff	Admiral Muhammad Zakaullah	Pakistan Navy	2 October 2014

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Education System Of Pakistan

Education in Pakistan

Education in Pakistan

Federal Ministry of Education
Literacy (2015)
Total	58%
Enrollment
Total	37,462,900
Primary	22,650,000
Secondary	2,884,400
Post secondary	1,349,000

Education in Pakistan is dependent by the Ministry of Education of the Government of Pakistan as well as the provincial governments, whereas the federal government mostly assists in curriculum development, accreditation and in the financing of research and development. Article 25-A of Constitution of Pakistan obligates the state to provide free and compulsory quality education to children of the age group 3 to 16 years. "The State shall provide free and compulsory education in such a manner as may be determined by law".

The education system in Pakistan is generally divided into six levels: Primary education (for the age from 2.5 to 5 years); primary (grades one through five); middle (grades six through eight); high (grades nine and ten, leading to the Secondary School Certificate or SSC); intermediate (grades eleven and twelve, leading to a Higher Secondary (School) Certificate or HSC); and university programs leading to undergraduate and graduate degrees.

The literacy rate ranges from 96% in Islamabad to 28% in the Kohlu District Between 2000 and 2004, Pakistanis in the age group 55–64 had a literacy rate of almost 38%, those ages 45–54 had a literacy rate of nearly 46%, those 25–34 had a literacy rate of 57%, and those ages 15–24 had a literacy rate of 72%. Literacy rates vary regionally, particularly by sex. In tribal areas female literacy is 9.5%. Moreover, English is fast spreading in Pakistan, with more than 92 million Pakistanis (49% of the population) having a command over the English language, which makes it thethird largest English-speaking nation in the world and the second largest in Asia. On top of that, Pakistan produces about 445,000 university graduates and 10,000 computer science graduates per year. Despite these statistics, Pakistan still has one of the highest illiteracy rates in the world and the second largest out of school population (5.1 million children) after Nigeria.

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Personal Skills

Life Skills

Every body have some skills. Some peoples know how to use them but some peoples don't know how to use their skills. Life skills have been defined by the World Health Organization (WHO) as “abilities for adaptive and positive behavior that enable individuals to deal effectively with the demands and challenges of everyday life”. They represent the psycho-social skills that determine valued behaviour and include reflective skills such as problem-solving and critical thinking, to personal skills such as self-awareness, and to interpersonal skills. Practicing life skills leads to qualities such as self-esteem, sociability and tolerance, to action competencies to take action and generate change, and to capabilities to have the freedom to decide what to do and who to be. Life skills are thus distinctly different from physical or perceptual motor skills, such as practical or health skills, as well as from livelihood skills, such as crafts, money management and entrepreneurial skills . Health and livelihood education however, can be designed to be complementary to life skills education, and vice versa

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Life Skills-Based Education (LSBE) has a long history of supporting child development and health promotion in many parts. In 1986, the Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion recognized life skills in terms of making better health choices. The 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) linked life skills to education by stating that education should be directed towards the development of the child’s fullest potential. The 1990 Jomtien Declaration on Education for All took this vision further and included life skills among essential learning tools for survival, capacity development and quality of life. The 2000 Dakar World Education Conference took a position that all young people and adults have the human right to benefit from “an education that includes learning to know, to do, to live together and to be”, and included life skills in two out of the six EFA Goals.

Life skills-based education is now recognized as a methodology to address a variety of issues of child and youth development and thematic responses including as expressed in UNGASS on HIV/AIDS (2001), UNGASS on Children (2002), World Youth Report (2003), World Program for Human Rights Education (2004), UN Decade on Education for Sustainable Development (2005), UN Secretary General’s Study on Violence Against Children (2006), 51st Commission on the Status of Women (2007), and the World Development Report (2007).

Expected learning outcomes include a combination of knowledge, values, attitudes and skills with a particular emphasis on those skills that related to critical thinking and problem solving, self-management and communication and inter-personal skills

You have to grow up your skills.

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Give the Kid a Pencil

Give the Kid a Pencil

 Submitted by Muhammad Waqas on January 30, 2016

• Blogs and Articles:
 Educational Struggles 

I've recently completed my Journalism corse seeking. In one lesson, our focus was on creating a psychologically safe learning environment for students. It was an issue of managing poor students. I posed a question:

If a student shows up to class without a pencil, how should the teacher respond?

Small groups collaborated for a few minutes. Ultimately, they came up with plans involving taking something (a shoe?) from the student as collateral to remind the student about the importance of having supplies, notifying parents and even assigning classroom cleanup duty or lunch detention. 

“What about you, Prof?” they asked.

“I would give the kid a pencil,” I said.

“You mean the first time?” someone asked.

“Every time,” I said.

This evidently had not occurred to them. There must be some punishment, subtle humiliation or a response that makes the kid pay for the error, right? They were concerned that my action would reinforce and reward poor behavior, possibly even help develop bad habits.

What they failed to see is that the teacher is not the cause of the problem. Likely, the student has been doing this for years. The teacher can respond by criticizing the child in front of the class, reminding him that pencils are required at school, making her give up something as collateral or inflicting some punishment as a power move.  

Or the instructor can simply provide the pencil and say, “There will always be a pencil here for you. Don’t ever worry about asking me for a pencil. I have hundreds of them.”

By eliminating the anxiety that comes when students worry about being called out or humiliated in front of their peers, teachers reduce the chance that students will skip class, give up, become defiant or develop mysterious “illnesses” that cause them to stay home. Obviously, these students struggle with remembering supplies. This is likely the result of many factors in their lives, none of which has anything to do with the teacher. Perhaps it is ADHD or a medication side effect, stress or simple forgetfulness or immaturity. (They are, after all, just kids, right?) What good does it do to rub it in their faces every day? And years later, what are they likely to remember about the class or the teacher?

“But what about the student who takes advantage of you?” one of the graduate students asked. “How do you know they aren’t doing it on purpose?”

Of course there is the chance I will be taken advantage of. I welcome this chance. I resolve to remain a patient advocate for the child even if he is testing me. When I hand him the 50th pencil and remind him there is always one here, what will be his likely impression? Has humiliation worked so far in his educational experience? Has the status quo resolved the issue? Imagine the impact of endless advocacy. We should all be extended such grace.

Also, students who are constantly badgered for forgetting pencils start stealing pencils to avoid being singled out and embarrassed. One could argue that shaming leads to the stealing. A child will go to great lengths to avoid humiliation.

“How do we get all those pencils?” I always asked to all students .

I am a college graduate and not a professional. I have no trouble accessing the power structure in our community. How can I complain about finding pencils? In light of what so many others struggle with daily, this problem is minor. Find a way. Pay for them, borrow them, ask companies to donate them, hit up family members for pencils as holiday gifts. Have a pencil drive. Do a car wash for pencils. I don’t know, but figure it out. Life is a cycle of problem solving. You can find the pencils. 

Students learn best in a psychologically safe, mistake-friendly environment. We all make mistakes. How teachers respond has everything to do with whether or not their students feel valued as human beings. We are responsible for creating a psychologically safe classroom. In all possible situations, we should seek to uphold the dignity of the student. Even when disciplinary action is necessary, it should be handled in a dignified way.

“Mr. D, can I have a pencil?"

“Of course, anytime."

Donohue is a middle school English and social studies teacher in Monroe, Washington. He also teaches college courses in English, public speaking and education.

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