Tackling the challenge of Covid-19 in Pakistan: Expecting wonders from a fragile health system

In an article about the challenge of Covid-19 in Pakistan, Dr Sameen Siddiqi, Professor and Chair, Department of Community Health Sciences, Aga Khan University, Karachi, notes: “The most reassuring feature of the Covid-19 epidemic is that its prevention relies as much, if not more, on community participation and population level interventions such as social distancing, hand hygiene and self-isolation as it does on a mature health system. This is how China controlled the epidemic and other countries are following suit. Pakistanis should rise to the challenge, practice these preventive measures and use this as an opportunity to demonstrate the nationhood that seems to have dimmed in recent decades.”