If we compiled the number of people who die daily in Pakistan, I am fairly certain that more deaths would be found resulting from medical malpractice and inadequate treatment, than from natural causes, old age and even violence.

After all, health facilitation is no priority on the agenda of our rulers, who can easily fly abroad for their own treatment.

It was pure agony to follow the recent, tragic tale of Dr Shahid Nawaz at Pims. The late cardiologist took a bullet shot to the head, in an attack inside the hospital on February 14. Dr Shahid's friends and family were forced to shift him to Combined Military Hospital after learning about "the absence of even the most basic treatment protocols at Pims".

It appears from news reports that the CT Scanner and EEG machines at Pims were out of order.

This is an utterly horrific state of affair. Even though Dr Shahid's condition was beyond rescue from the moment he was attacked, his friends and family still chose to transfer him to another hospital just so they had "the satisfaction of knowing that all requisite tests have been duly performed in line with internationally-prescribed treatment protocols."

The above is just one of many unsettling hospital accounts out there.

Pharmacies often fail to provide life-saving drugs at the right time, or worse, supply expired ones. Quacks are plentiful and often the best bet to healthcare in remote villages and tribal areas. Over the years, people have lost all trust in the intentions of the state when it comes to the well-being of the common man.

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For a long time, one thought that all these ills applied more or less to the underprivileged only, who were unable to pay the hefty amounts needed for treatment in private hospitals in big cities, like Islamabad, Lahore or Karachi. But a recent personal experience proved me wrong, there are basic necessities which are unavailable to even affluent patients.

When my elder brother Ishaque Adil was admitted in a hospital with breathing problems, I was told the next day at noon that he would need a hospital bed with a ventilator on an urgent basis.

A friend and I embarked on a long search all over Karachi, driving some two hundred kilometres from one hospital to the other in desperation to find such a bed with a ventilator. We were turned away from all; each hospital had a waiting line for such patients.

Finally, after hours of search and delay of treatment, we found a bed in a hospital in Clifton. My brother's condition had drastically deteriorated by that time. We shifted him on Wednesday and immediately after his examination, the doctor told me his pneumonia had gotten worse and that he had ARDS (Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome); that his infection may creep up to his heart and kidneys.

Also read: Pakistan ranks third for pneumonia deaths in the world