Top 5 Trust Organizations Providing Free Medical Care to the People in Need in Pakistan from UK

Often life challenges us to walk on bad roads accommodated with unwanted crises, as the shadow of the evening increases with the setting sun. Top 5 Trust Organizations Providing Free Medical Care to People in Need in Pakistan from UK

You cannot expect life to follow a monotonous path. There will be bad times when financial crisis, sickness, accidents and emergencies will arise. During the times of acute illness, accidents or emergencies people will need hospitals to diagnose them and give them treatment regardless of their ability to pay or other prejudices.

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It is needless to speak about the importance of accessible healthcare for all. Healthcare is the only service on earth that can draw a line between life and death. In many developed countries, hundreds of millions cannot get proper healthcare services due to poverty but in the UK the scenario is different.

The National Health System (NHS) covers the healthcare of the entire population in the UK. The NHS is financed through general taxation and run by the Department of the Health itself. Therefore, treatment and diagnosis are provided to the citizens for free.

Despite the efforts made by the UK government, every individual does not receive the same quality of care in the country. The poor aren’t discriminated because of their financial status rather they receive lesser care, because their families do not have the best advocates inside the system to speak for their rights or take a stand for what is right!

If anybody wants to receive world-class treatment in the UK, they would need to be educated about the massive health bureaucracies first. They would need to have the guts to ask questions, be persistent in their demand, and need to have a strong voice to raise objections.

When the poor are sick or weak they usually do not have an advocate by their side to ask the questions, drive the process, demand answers from the experts, therefore, they get low standard services compared to the richer patients who have better networks in the healthcare system.

The NGOs, nonprofits and other charitable organizations working in the healthcare system act as the watchdogs, to ensure that every individual is receiving the same quality care. These organizations have the knowledge about the healthcare bureaucracies, and speak up on behalf of the poor for every procedure that doesn’t sound right.

The organizations provide healthcare advocacies for the poor, so that they can get a strong voice to make demands for the right tests and insist on the right outcomes. These organizations often have good networks in the healthcare system so they often use this as an advantage, to sponsor and assist quality healthcare for the patients that get registered under them to get treatment free of cost.

Providing basic health care is a humane act. A nation’s prosperity cannot be ensured without meeting the basic needs of the people first, enabling them to live longer and healthier.

List of Top 5 Trust Organizations Providing Free Medical

Care to People in Need in Pakistan from UK:

1- Transparent Hands

2-Al-Khair Foundation (AKF)

3-International Medical Corps

4-British Heart Foundation

5-National Health Service

1- Transparent Hands:

Quick and Easy Way to Save People’s Lives:

Transparent Hands is in first position in our list. Transparent Hands funds surgeries of poor patients using a global Crowdfunding platform. The platform provides visibility of poor patients, and builds a personal and trusted bond between patients and donors while ensuring complete transparency.

Where Is the Problem?

More than 70 million people in Pakistan are living below the poverty line, due to which they are unable to undergo proper health treatment if they experience any disease. Estimated amount of surgery backlog in Pakistan is in millions every year.

There are not many health insurance plans for underprivileged community. They have to pay out of pocket if they need any medical treatment, but due to the limited or no resources majority is unable to undergo surgical treatment.
Beyond the cost of the surgical procedure, they might have to pay for pre and post-operative expenses which includes medical tests, medications, hospital stay and other expenses. It is almost impossible for someone who earns less than $2 a day to pay hefty amount for medical relief.
There is lack of advanced medical facilities and medical professionals, due to which lower middle class families are unable to avail treatment facilities.
There are a limited number of beds in hospitals but the number of patients visiting these hospitals is a lot more.
Every second patient including a child is put on a long waiting list and during the waiting period, the patient’s health further deteriorates. In most of the cases, patients expire until their turn comes.
There is no advanced healthcare services in slums due to which majority of people have to rely on quacks in their areas.
Private hospitals are out of reach for deprived community due to the high costs of consultation fees and surgical procedure.

Our Role:

Committed to Provide Free Surgeries to Those Who Cannot Afford

Transparent Hands is a non-profit organization which is tackling this major healthcare issue of Pakistan with the help of fundraising through its unique Crowdfunding platform. It is registered under Trust Act 1882 as a Trust Organization with a Tax Exemption status under the article 2(36) in Pakistan. Transparent Hands is registered in USA EIN assigned: 47-3564801 as Transparent Hands Foundation US, Inc. with tax exemption status 501(c)3.

Transparent Hands conducts the surgeries of deserving patients free of cost, at private hospitals with the help of donations and charity. Donors from all over the world can use our online Crowdfunding web portal if they wish to donate. They could select any patient, fund the surgery and receive regular feedback and updates until the patient is recovered completely.

Our user friendly online fundraising work as follows:

Choose the patient whose surgery you want to fund.
Choose from a number of payment methods as per your convenience.
Donate to that particular patient and get tax exemption.
Get regular updates of that patient until he/she gets fully recovered.

What makes us unique is; our transparency level that means donors will be ensured, that each penny they are giving will be spent on the needy patient. We do this by uploading all the hospital bills and other documents of our patient after his/her surgery is successfully conducted. Donor can see that the exact amount hospital has charged against the surgery of that particular patient.

Download our TransparentHands Andriod Application for Online Donation

2-Al-Khair Foundation (AKF):

Al-Khair Foundation is in second position in our list. Al-Khair Foundation (AKF) is always on standby to support victims during emergencies and disasters.

From internal conflicts to natural disasters, Al-Khair Foundation prides itself in being one of the first on the ground to respond. In the event of an emergency, they dispatch their relief teams to assess the situation, provide vital support and deliver necessary aid. Once on the ground, they work to deliver the essentials (clean water, food, shelter and medication) to survivors and affected people.They responded to natural disasters and crises in Pakistan, India, Afghanistan, Palestine, Nepal and the United Kingdom, as well as providing considerable support for refugees fleeing conflict in Syria, Burma and Yemen. AKF also has on-going relief projects in parts of the world ,where war and regular disasters have left the population without social stability and security.Your generous donations will help us to reach more survivors during an emergency. Your donations allow us to feed and hydrate more disaster-affected communities and keep them warm during the winter months.

Al-Khair Foundation is a UK-based international NGO providing humanitarian support, international development, emergency aid and disaster relief in some of the world’s most deprived areas. Established in 2003 and rapidly growing into one of the leading Muslim charities in the UK, Al-Khair Foundation also looks to tackle issues prevalent in the UK as well, such as unemployment, education, women’s empowerment and domestic violence.

How They Started:

Al-Khair Foundation (AKF) began with a school. In the Islamic tradition, which advocates that charity starts at home, they wanted to give back to their UK community first, and education was the best thing they knew to give.

How They Grew:

Today, Al-Khair Foundation (AKF) is a UK-based Muslim charity, and although they’ve been engaged in charitable work from the outset, education was initially their key priority. After their UK schools proved to be a success, AKF started building schools overseas. Their focus was educating orphans and children from underprivileged communities. This led to their work with widows and vulnerable women, and then to the establishment of the AKF shelters. Eventually they launched their water aid and livelihood projects, as well as the Al-Khair Foundation medical aid programmes ,2005 became a turning point for us when AKF rose to the challenge of providing emergency aid during the Kashmir Earthquake of that year. This was their first venture into the area of Overseas Disaster Relief. That October, and in the winter months which followed, AKF distributed food, shelter kits and medicine to survivors of the quake. Since then, AKF has undertaken emergency aid missions all over the world. Their support of the Haiti earthquake survivors was recognized by the United Nations in 2010. While during the Japan earthquake of 2011, they were the only UK Muslim charity working with survivors on the ground.

3-International Medical Corps:

International Medical Corps is in third position in our list.

About International Medical Corps:

International Medical Corps is a global, humanitarian, nonprofit organization dedicated to saving lives and relieving suffering through health care training and relief and development programs. Established in 1984 by volunteer doctors and nurses, International Medical Corps is a private, voluntary, nonpolitical, nonsectarian organization.

Their Mission:

Its mission is to improve the quality of life through health interventions and related activities, that build local capacity in under served communities worldwide.

By offering training and health care to local populations and medical assistance to people at highest risk, and with the flexibility to respond rapidly to emergency situations, International Medical Corps rehabilitates devastated health care systems and helps bring them back to self-reliance. International Medical Corps Worldwide is a global humanitarian alliance that comprises the resources and capabilities of two independent affiliate organizations, International Medical Corps and International Medical Corps UK. Together, our mission is to save lives and relieve suffering through the provision of health care and training. With headquarters in the United States and the United Kingdom respectively, we collaborate to maximize resources for the delivery of appropriate relief and development activities.

4-British Heart Foundation:

The British Heart Foundation is in fourth position in our list.It was founded in 1961 by a group of medical professionals, who were concerned about the increasing death rate from cardiovascular disease. They wanted to fund extra research into the causes, diagnosis, treatment and prevention of heart and circulatory diseases.

It is a major funder and authority in cardiovascular research, education and care, and relies predominantly on voluntary donations to meet its aims. In order to increase income and maximize the impact of its work, it also works with other organizations to combat premature death and disability from cardiovascular disease.

Activities:

The British Heart Foundation’s main focus is to fund cardiovascular research, aiming to spend around £100 million a year funding scientists around the UK. They are currently funding over 1000 research projects.

Since 2008 the British Heart Foundation has been investing in Centres of Research Excellence. The six current centres bring together scientists from a number of disciplines to work on research projects to beat heart and circulatory disease.The current Centres of Research are:

Imperial College London
King’s College London
University of Cambridge
University of Edinburgh
University of Glasgow
University of Oxford

In 2013 the BHF committed to funding three multi-institution Centres of Regenerative Medicine, investing £7.5 million over four years to fund scientists looking for new treatments for heart failure.

Other Activities Include:

Information – BHF will provide information to help people reduce their own heart health risk.

Campaigning – BHF will get government to establish policies that minimize the risk of developing heart and circulatory disease

Support – offering advice to those with heart conditions via their website, information booklets or heart helpline.

Life saving skills – the BHF currently offers free CPR kits to schools and is working with the Department of Health to distribute defibrillators throughout England.

In 2015 The British Heart Foundation had an income of just over £133m. In 2015 the BHF spent £102.5 million on funding cardiovascular research and £30.8 million on prevention, survival and support activities.

5-National Health Service :

About the NHS:

The NHS has a fanatic view of the current healthcare system. They are living in a delusion that the poor are getting the same treatment as the rich and the civilians are also made to believe this myth blindly.The NHS was launched in 1948.It was born out of a long-held ideal that good healthcare should be available to all, regardless of wealth – one of the NHS’s core principles. NHS in England remains free at the point of use for all UK residents. This currently stands at more than 64.6 million people in the UK and 54.3 million people in England alone.

The NHS in England deals with over 1 million patients every 36 hours. It covers everything, including antenatal screening, routine screenings (such as the NHS Health Check), treatments for long-term conditions, transplants, emergency treatment and end-of-life care.

Structure of the NHS in England:

In 2014, the Commonwealth Fund declared that in comparison with the healthcare systems of 10 other countries (Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and the US) the NHS was the most impressive overall. The NHS was rated as the best system in terms of efficiency, effective care, safe care, co-ordinated care, patient-centred care and cost-related problems.

The NHS in England is the biggest part of the system by far, catering to a population of 54.3 million and employing around 1.2 million people. Of those, the clinically qualified staff include 150,273 doctors, 40,584 general practitioners (GPs), 314,966 nurses and health visitors, 18,862 ambulance staff, and 111,127 hospital and community health service (HCHS) medical and dental staff.

Funding:

Funding for the NHS comes directly from taxation. Since the NHS transformation in 2013, the NHS payment system has become underpinned by legislation. The Health & Social Care Act 2012 moves responsibility for pricing from the Department of Health, to a shared responsibility for NHS England and NHS Improvement. When the NHS was launched in 1948, it had a budget of £437 million (roughly £15 billion at today’s value). For 2015/16, the overall NHS budget was around £116.4 billion. NHS England is managing £101.3 billion of this.

Download our TransparentHands iPhone Application for Online Donation

The healthcare system in the UK is biased and it provides the best treatment to the patients who are rich, have good connections and possess some sort of authority in our society.

If a clinician gives low-quality treatment to a patient who is poor, uneducated and cannot advocate for himself, nothing will happen.

If the clinician dares to give low standard care to a patient who is rich and can hire a legal representative, then he will be caught and would no longer be able to practice as a General Physician or specialist.

In the UK hospitals, it has become a common scenario that the rich are given too much preference than the poor. A very sick patient who is powerless will be forced to wait for hours and will be assessed by an internee, whilst a specialist will be attending a patient within an hour simply because he has a legal representative to advocate for him.

Providing good healthcare is a good public policy. A healthy nation shows great adaptability and toughness in adverse situations and is also cost-effective in the long run. A healthy nation will be more fit and productive, thus they would keep the economy running, which in turn will have a clear impact on the GDP.

It is really important that we focus our attention on the plight of millions that have no access to basic human right and are deprived of getting quality health services without the fear of financial hardship.

According to the World Health Organization, there are one billion people in the world suffering in sickness but cannot dare to ask for treatment or medicines. Every day about 100 million people are compelled to live in poverty due to the cost of accessing their local healthcare services.

NGOs and charitable organizations are playing their role to improve the healthcare system, to ensure that each individual is able to access their basic human right. Now the responsibility lies on the world leaders, policymakers and health professionals to come forward and join hands to ensure healthy living for all.

The government and policymakers should realize that investing in healthcare does not mean investing only on one individual. Investing in healthcare is equivalent to investing in the long-term economic and social benefits of the country.

Top 5 Trust Organizations Providing Free Medical Care to the People in Need in Pakistan from UK