The law is a traditional public health tool that has made several. Important contributions to major public health achievements of the 20th century. Including school immunization laws that helped reduce infectious disease rates and tobacco control. Laws that helped reduce chronic disease rates in the United States. US states. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is working tirelessly to address. The issue of violence against healthcare workers, healthcare facilities, medical transport, and patients in Pakistan. Health Laws in Pakistan
Government Promotions
The government is promoting evidence-based initiatives in collaboration with health departments and leading universities. , and government hospitals. The central law governing these issues is Chapter 3 of the Factories Act, 1934. All provinces have framed Factories Rules under this Act. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Sindh enacted factories legislation in 2013 and 2016 respectively. Another relevant legislation is the Rules of Occupations effective under the Factories Act, 1963. These rules not only define certain hazardous occupations (working with lead; aerated water; rubber; chromium. Cellulose solution spraying; sand blasting; sodium and potassium-bichromates; petroleum gas producing plant) but. The Chief Inspector of Factories also empowers them to announce any other work act as dangerous. Health Laws in Pakistan
Partition Of The Indian Subcontinent
When the partition of the Indian subcontinent created Pakistan in 1947, the newly formed state continued with the Lunacy Act of 1912, which existed in British India. The Act focused more on detention than treatment and with advances in treatment, particularly the introduction of psychotropic drugs, required updated legislation. In the 1970s and beyond, advocates of reform were active in this legislation.
New Mental Health Laws In Pak
The Government of Pakistan proposed a new Mental Health Act in 1992 and released a draft for comments among psychiatrists (Rahman, 1994) but it was not until 2001 that the 1912 Insanity Act was amend into the 2001 Mental Health Ordinance. Changed from The document was presented at the biennial conference of the Pakistan Psychiatric Society in Islamabad in 2001, attended by a number of British psychiatrists, who worked with Pakistani psychiatrists to further refine the draft. A large number of psychiatrists from Pakistan have trained in the UK and there are currently a large number of British Pakistani psychiatrists in the UK who have strong links with psychiatry in Pakistan. Not surprisingly, therefore, given these historical and ongoing links, the Ordinance bore striking similarities to the UK’s Mental Health Act 1983.
Laws relating to occupational health
- Factories Act, 1934 (Occupational Health Act)
- Employees’ Social Security Ordinance, 1965
- Workers Welfare Fund Ordinance, 1971
- Employees Old Age Benefits Act, 1976
- Pakistan Plant Quarantine Act, 1976
Control of infectious diseases
- The Vaccination Act, 1880
- Epidemic Diseases Act, 1897
- Epidemic Diseases Act, 1958
- Epidemic Diseases (Amendment) Act, 2011
- The West Pakistan Epidemic Diseases Act, 1958
- The Glanders and Persians Act, 1899 An Act on Horse
Limited Ordinance Health Laws in Pakistan
The Ordinance limited the period of compulsory detention by police and magistrates to a maximum of 72 hours. Earlier, it was 10 days, which could be extend up to 30 days by order of a magistrate, which was certainly prone to abuse. The ordinance dealt with access to mental health care and voluntary and involuntary treatment. The period of involuntary admission varies under different clauses. For example, detention for diagnosis was for 28 days, detention for treatment was for 6 months, detention for urgent admission purposes was for 72 hours and emergency holding of a patient already in the hospital continued for 24 hours.
could stay The ordinance outlined processes by which patients had the right to appeal against their involuntary admission, to be heard by a local magistrate, and applications would be made within 14 days of detention. Patients can be discharg to the care of their relatives at any stage of their treatment once they have recovered adequately. The patient’s family had protected the right to discharge the patient.
Sections of the Ordinance
Sections of the Ordinance deal with issues of competence, capacity, and guardianship for people with mental illness. Chapter 7 focuses on the protection of human rights, including privacy and informed consent. Chapter 8 deals with offenses against persons with a mental disorder, including knowingly making false statements to discredit someone as having a mental disorder. Willful neglect by a manager of a patient’s property, or refusal to provide for that patient’s accounts or property; Patient abuse or neglect by psychiatric facility staff; and inhumane treatment or exploitation. It was an attempt to deal with common abuses. However, there was a gap as there was no clarity on how to deal with crimes committed by a person with a mental disorder, which would be dealt with by other parts of the criminal and civil law (Gilani et al., 2005).Health Laws in Pakistan
Country’s Legal Infrastructure
A country’s legal infrastructure consists of laws and policies that govern and monitor the health-related actions of both governmental and non-governmental organizations. However, the mere existence of certain laws is not enough, they should at least be accessible to relevant health professionals and policymakers and preferably to the public. A central database of all public health legislation in Pakistan is the first step toward meeting the need for access to legal information. Various operational legal databases already exist. They can be use as a guide to update the law of Pakistan to serve as a repository, which is more comprehensive, functional, and up-to-date and which is not only for the High Court. Is. made accessible to lawyers, but also to all relevant stakeholders. currently the case. Additionally, the central database may include links to health law repositories on the websites of relevant ministries.
Database of Health Laws in Pakistan
A database that is updated regularly will also solve the problem of ambiguity about the current status of various health laws. A desk review was conducted on the available literature in the field of health laws in Pakistan. Keyword searches were conduct using the Internet (Google) and supplemented by more specific keyword searches conducted on the Pakistan Law site. Keywords were select bases on a review of existing literature. The Pakistan Law site (accessed by the High Court) was searches using keywords. healthy food; illness; Smoking disasters Malaria HIV/AIDS; drugs; blood feeding; maternal health; disabled people; mental health; health governance; and social determinants of health.
Apart from this, the websites of the provincial health department were also searches. Our initial search yielded a total of 250 rules. After removing duplicates we were leave with 233 rules. Further screening resulted in the exclusion of another 35 laws based on public health relevance, and our final list consisted of 198 laws.