Few days ago, I was thinking about medical tourism and it occurred to me that India should have been at the top of the league because when I was in States, I was informed at multiple occasions that both Pakistani and Indian doctors are ruling the medicinal industry. But unfortunately, medical is so expensive in the States that, according to People Beyond Borders, 900,000 Americans went outside the country last year to get their treatment done and the number has been on the rise in the past decade. I researched a bit and actually found India among the top 5 countries where people go to get their medical treatment. Unfortunately, there was no mention of Pakistan and medical tourism :/

I happened to visit USA in 2011 and made a trip to Intel and Apple Factory. Intel had made a small museum inside their vicinity for the tourists to have a chronological view of their technological development. I clearly remember a screen showing the names of the intellects who had contributed a lot to Intel and to my surprise, I saw way too many Indian names. I was actually glad – all the hard workers, whoever they are and wherever they are from, should reap the benefit of their struggles.

This made me wonder why Pakistan cannot top the chart of medical tourism despite having the best brains in the world when it comes to medicine. If you keep aside the security factor (which is definitely a genuine concern for the tourists – thanks to our image) – there are multiple other foundations that need to be laid out first.

Whether we like Imran Khan or not, but the only hospital that comes to our mind for the treatment of Cancer is Shaukat Khanum. Shaukat Khanum alone has the command to flourish this phenomena at least for this ailment – but what about rest of the diseases? Unfortunately, we have big names with us but not the platforms which can actually create that kind of a spell. This industry demands systems in place and not discrete people to ensure authority and attract patients from around the world.

If you ask me to name the best oncologist at Shaukut Khanum then I may not be able to answer well on this. Reason being, the quality of service is excellent and everyone seems master of his work and hence, whatever is masked behind this hospital is the recipe of great success if we want medical tourism to flourish in this part of the world.

For diabetes, the most authentic doctor to go to is Faisal Masood. Now this is a big name and perhaps everyone knows about him in Lahore but what about the other cities? I’m sure the name fades aways as the distances between the cities grow. For the treatment of infertility, I have heard multiple miracle stories about Dr. Zeryab Setna. This man does wonders with his hands – hopeless couples get a ray of light when he treats them but can we just use this name to attract couples from around the world?

We have a cheap currency and reasonably decent hotels to go with an assurance of great medical treatment but somehow nothing is falling into the right place at the moment. As mentioned earlier, what is missing is a platform – a system to attract awareness around this subject.

I’m a logical Muslim and get most of my aspirations from my religion. What I have gathered or made sense of Allah’s work is that He also believed in, and worked on making systems. Anything that might have started as a chaos is perfectly running in a balanced and systematic way. There is no discrete phenomena existing on its own – because that may just be senseless and believe me, there is nothing meaningless in this world. Every single being and object has a purpose, otherwise it is a havoc.

Hence, He puts everything under a routine or a cycle. Ice age on earth repeats after every 10,000 years, then we have 90,000 years of ice age and the process repeats! We have all planets floating in the space. Space is all vacuum then what is holding these gigantic balls together? The masses of the bigger balls? Why can’t these planets fall in the space and drown infinitely into an abyss? Because, there is a system created at every level. When He worked for six days on His creation and took rest on the seventh – He wasn’t making things in isolation. He had the recipe of making systems which can work on an auto-pilot and sustain their own existence.

Somehow or the other Malaysia, Singapore, India and all those countries which have topped the chart under this particular subject have cracked the code of building a system and we are still in a chaos even while having the right set of ingredients!

I’m ending this note with a positive thought that someday we might as well figure out the code for having self-sustaining platforms that are for the betterment of the world at large!