an itinerant observer

“Primum non nocere.”  (First, to do no harm) This is how I started a  blog  for the  Express Tribune  a few years ago. I wrote it then because I felt I had to speak out. A sweeper in Karachi had been rushed to a nearby hospital after he succumbed to noxious gases while trying to clear a sewer. The shocking bit was that the fasting doctor on duty refused to treat the critically ill sweeper covered in sewage water, claiming that doing so would have broken his fast. Interestingly, it is Ramazan again, so perhaps an apt time to remind my fellow healthcare professionals to recall their primary responsibility – the patient. Fast forward two years, and I’m once again recalling  primum non nocere , the starting phrase of the Hippocratic Oath – a solemn promise exhorting freshly minted medical and nursing graduates to heal their patients, but prior to that, to do no harm. I am again reminded of the oath, as there’s been a recent upswing in alleged cases of medical negligence in Paki