PESHAWAR, June 20: The continued presence of millions of Afghan refugees in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has brought amongst other things, its health infrastructure under tremendous pressure and as the deadline for the expiry of their refugee status approaches, questions are being asked if the international community, pushing for an extension, would also come forward to contribute to the health infrastructure in the province.
Hayatabad Medical Complex (HMC) is an example of a hospital which, in addition to two other teaching hospitals in the city of Peshawar, is bearing the major load of Afghan refugees.
Dr Shiraz Jamal, Associate Professor at the Medical B ward of HMC, states that the majority of their patients are Afghans that puts a pressure on the health sector to generate facilities for a greater number than what it is required to cater.
One of the city’s main teaching hospitals is not just catering to thousands of Afghan refugee patients, but also those coming from across the Durand Line from as far as southwestern Afghanistan.
Saba Gul, an Afghan attendant at HMC, travelled all the way from Kandahar for medical treatment of her husband. Upon being inquired the reason for making the journey, she referred to the lack of medical facilities available in her home country. She even said that an open access across the border of the two countries would ease their lives.
“The sole purpose of my stay at Pakistan is my sons’ education that I aim to send abroad for further studies. It has been a long time since we have moved from Afghanistan. I have set up businesses here which is the only source of my income. I cannot even imagine returning as that would be synonymous to starting all over again, which I cannot afford,” says Suleman Khan, another refugee, whose children are being educated in a prestigious school of the city.
Despite the UNHCR providing transport and a stipend per head to all those moving back, the Afghans are reluctant to move back to their own country. The Afghanistan government should now formulate plans for the nourishment of its economy and create jobs and business opportunities to attract its people back into the country after years of living in asylum, as migrants and refugees.
Officials said that the international community kept pushing for extension to Afghans’ stay in Pakistan but did nothing to share the burden with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, which had been affected by violent insurgency and fast declining economy.
They said that the international community used to provide assistance to HMC to compensate it for looking after Afghan patients but now Khyber Pakhtunkhwa had been left all alone to fend for itself and pay for their treatment from its own meagre resources.
They said that seven out of 10 patients turning up and examined at HMC were Afghan refugees, which, they added, meant that the time that could have been spent on examining seven Pakistanis, were being taken away by Afghans, who were not entitled to treatment.
“It is Pakistani tax-payers money which is being spent on hospitals like HMC to treat Pakistani patients but here we are treating mostly Afghans. It is one thing to look at it from humanitarian angle but it is another to see it from purely monetary angle. We are spending our resources and using our equipment to treat people, who essentially are the responsibility of the international community,” a senior government official said. He said that federal government granted extension without caring to provide for the tremendous burden they were taking and so was the case with the international community. — By Mahnoor Babar