Third World countries desirous of raising the standard of living of their people invariably make major allocations of funds to two sectors – health and education. But, unfortunately, both these sectors are criminally ignored in Pakistan, getting a meager share of allocations of 2.5 and 3.7 per cent of GDP. The poor patients, for all the tall claims of providing free treatment to them, suffer for want of medicines at government hospitals in Punjab as well as elsewhere in the country and are forced to pay through their nose to buy them from the market.
Former chief minister Chaudhry Pervaiz Ilahi introduced a system of free medicines to all patients reporting in emergency wards of government hospitals and monitored the implementation of his orders. Sitting chief minister  Mian Shahbaz Sharif is also very keen to provide free medicines to poor patients and ensured adequate supply last year when dengue fever was rampant in several districts of the province. The Punjab government issued instructions to all medical superintendents to display lists of medicines available at the entrance of wards. But for some reasons, none of the hospitals are doing so at present while most of the hospitals have exhausted their stock of medicines. We urge the provincial government to urgently look into the situation and save the poor patients of their predicament.