Hacker News

> > Patients from Tando Allah Yar reported a mean 3.8 visits to a healthcare provider by a member of their household during the previous month,

This seems like an excessive number of doctor visits, too. I can’t imagine a household where someone is going to the doctor almost every week. 45 doctor visits a year and they’re getting injections (of what?) most of the time?

A similar thing happens in the US; people demand antibiotics for a cold. It’s easier to say yes than to explain the reason it won’t work.

Probably patient demand for *something*. The problem of antibiotics for viral infection is well known but the problem with needing to do something is far more widespread. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of saline is getting injected.

It's also not perfect. Sure you can throw instruments into an autoclave or even boiling water but they have to be kept sterile after they come out, which is probably harder to do especially in underdeveloped, resource-poor areas.

A month's wage in Pakistan is about $125. So each syringe would feel like a cup of Dunkin does to many in the USA

Equipment that can be sterilized has been forced out of the market by these disposable things. It is far easier to push disposable product on medical providers and encourage rent-seeking and subscriptions to such things.

It’s exactly the same way with contact lenses. When I was in college in the ’90s, I could get a pair of permanent contact lenses. They would cost a few hundred bucks, but they would last me several years if the prescription didn’t change. They were the same as glasses. You would clean them everyday and disinfect them, and they would serve quite well permanently.

But the contact lens industry decided that wasn’t good enough, and decided that they could sell subscription services for contact lenses that you would need to discard every night.

And those daily wear contact lenses, the disposable kind, basically forced out of the market the permanent ones and now the optometrist regards me as a Martian when I request permanent lenses instead.

If you forget to autoclave them or not done properly you end up with infected patients, risk is just too much

If you can't trust them to follow the very easy directions of "throw away the single use syringe", how likely is it that they are going to follow the much more complicated process of properly sanitizing the glass syringe?

Cost, or availability due to cost. Still a driver in developing countries.

From the WHO article linked to by GP, the issue is that patients also insist on injections over oral meds.

That's driving the insistence on injections, and rural doctors/clinics cutting corners.

> The Generals would siphon off most of it to buy their palatial Dubai houses and London condos.

Next door to other world leaders doing the same? Is that truly our motivation for not transferring the money? Some generals might illicitly buy houses?

> Until Pakistan cleans up its act

I'm sure "The Generals" are going to help there.

> giving it more loans it throwing good money after bad.

Abandoning them entirely as hostages is not acceptable.

The parent comment is suggesting sanctioning them, not giving them IMF loans.

> When we showed Buzdar our undercover footage, he insisted it had been filmed before his tenure or that it had been staged. When asked what he would say to local parents watching this footage, he said: "I can say to them with certainty, with confidence, that you should get your treatment done at THQ Taunsa."

Not gonna fix this with education if they won't admit to having a problem in the first place.

Are you claiming that Pakistani nurses and doctors are not educated on the dangers of needle reuse?

Someone like USAID needs to support such education with funding etc.- https://www.mtapsprogram.org/our-work/health-area/antimicrob...

Too bad Elon got rid of it.

> They are highly distrustful in particular of people offering vaccines

FTA

> Our investigation suggests that unsafe practices are in part driven by systemic pressures including a reliance on, and cultural preference for, injections as treatment.

> Pakistan has one of the highest rates of therapeutic injections in the world, many of them medically unnecessary. Members of the general public ask for them, including for their children, and doctors happily oblige, says Mir.

Stop making shit up

I've been getting one intermittently in recent weeks on the BBC site from the US.

Currently only in the USA. You can read a few articles for free, then there is a $9/month or $50/year subscription.

It includes the website, the live streaming BBC News TV channel, and a library of documentaries.

And from the perspective of who pays the cost.

Wherever you are, the cost of the said items is always much cheaper than the infection