PMA warns of medical pipeline collapse from classrooms to clinics
IV Report
KARACHI: The Pakistan Medical
Association (PMA) has warned of a collapse in the country’s medical pipeline
stretching from college admissions to hospital jobs, saying the profession is
being abandoned by both aspiring students and trained doctors due to low pay,
insecurity, and what it called systemic state neglect.
In an emergency press statement
released Thursday, PMA Secretary General Dr Abdul Ghafoor Shoro said Pakistan
is “sleepwalking into a devastating healthcare freeze” that could leave
millions without doctors within the next decade and a half unless immediate,
system-wide reforms are enacted.
At the other end of the pipeline,
the PMA said the country is hemorrhaging qualified staff. About 3,800 to 4,000
doctors left Pakistan in 2025 alone, which it called the largest annual
migration of medical professionals in national history. More than 1,400 doctors
have recently departed specifically for postgraduate training abroad, with
“little expectation of return due to the hostile local environment,” the
statement said.
The association added that Pakistan
is losing 30% to 40% of its trained nursing workforce to international markets
that offer better security and professional respect.
The PMA said the vast majority of
doctors currently registered with the Pakistan Medical and Dental Council (PMDC)
are in the 50–60 age bracket. With young entrants declining and trained staff
leaving, it warned of a “total vacuum in medical service delivery” in 10 to 15
years as the current generation retires with no replacements.
Economic disparity was cited as a
central driver. According to the PMA, an IT engineer in Pakistan routinely
earns four times more than a medical doctor with equivalent or longer training.
Starting salaries at many private institutions, it said, are “equivalent to the
wage of a driver working in a reputable company.”
Working conditions were also
flagged. The association said doctors face “daily humiliation by administrators
and political leaders” and physical attacks by patient attendants “with zero
state protection.” Public hospitals, it added, are so resource-deprived that
doctors in major government facilities “often have less than two minutes per
patient,” making quality care impossible and driving burnout.
Private clinics, meanwhile, are
being “treated like retail outlets,” the PMA said, with what it called
aggressive commercial monitoring systems and crushing tax requirements that
further squeeze viability.
The association said the crisis
cannot be solved in parts and called for immediate action across the full
spectrum — from medical college admissions and examinations to employment,
workplace safety, and support for professional startups — to stop the
profession’s decline.
To that end, the PMA urged the state
to pass and enforce healthcare protection laws to end violence against on-duty
medical staff, and to revise pay scales for young doctors to offer what it
termed “survival-worthy packages” aligned with other professional tiers. It
further asked authorities to withdraw hostile tax compliance regimes targeting
private medical clinics, and to halt unregulated privatization of public
hospitals while ensuring viable public-sector career tracks.
“We are losing our country's
brightest minds because we treat them with humiliation at home,” Dr Shoro said.
“When a highly specialised doctor's livelihood is compared to an ordinary
employee wage, the state has failed its intellectuals. If the state does not
act today, tomorrow there will be no doctors left to treat this nation.”
The PMA did not announce protest
plans but said the situation amounted to a national emergency for healthcare. Health
policy experts have previously warned of brain drain in the sector, but the
PMA’s latest figures on MDCAT applicants and 2025 migration mark its starkest
assessment to date of a collapse across both entry and retention.
File photos courtesy: ST, IHHN, SIUT
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