Pakistan faces healthcare crisis as doctors leave in record numbers

Pakistan’s healthcare system is facing a growing crisis that has largely remained out of the spotlight - one that extends beyond patients’ struggles and points to a serious breakdown within the system itself.

Amid economic pressures, security concerns, and rising poverty, the country is now confronting a mass migration of medical professionals, with far-reaching implications for the quality and sustainability of healthcare services nationwide.

In the latest episode of On My Radar, Kamran Khan said that this exodus represents not just a numbers issue but a fundamental loss of confidence in Pakistan’s health sector. He explained that doctors are increasingly viewing emigration as the only viable option, underscoring a broader institutional failure to retain trained professionals.

Data reveals the scale of the problem. According to Gallup Pakistan’s analysis of Bureau of Emigration figures, for nearly three decades the annual departure of Pakistan-trained doctors had been limited and relatively stable.

A few hundred would leave each year, and the system would compensate. But around 2010, this balance shifted dramatically. For the first time, more than a thousand doctors left in a single year - and that trend has continued ever since.

By the mid-2010s, between 1,500 and 2,000 doctors were leaving annually, and in 2025 this figure surged to nearly 4,000, marking the largest yearly migration of medical professionals in Pakistan’s history. The overall outflow was even higher, with 762,499 people leaving Pakistan for employment in 2025 alone, according to the Bureau of Emigration.

These departures come at a time when Pakistan’s healthcare workforce should be expanding. The Pakistan Medical and Dental Council reports 385,259 registered medical practitioners in the country, with approximately 22,000 new doctors added to the register each year.

Around 70% of these new graduates are women, a statistic that might appear encouraging at first glance. However, deeper analysis reveals another challenge: Gallup Pakistan notes that 35% of female medical graduates never practice medicine at all.

In other words, more than one in three doctors - trained with state resources - never stands at a patient’s bedside due to social pressures, security concerns, excessive workloads, and limited professional growth opportunities.

The implications of these trends extend into patient care. Pakistan’s health landscape often feels like a gamble: access to treatment depends more on timing and circumstance than on systematic delivery. In many public hospitals, outpatient departments are overcrowded, with long queues and exhausted patients.

Doctors frequently have less than two minutes per patient, within which they must diagnose, order tests, and prescribe treatment. Based on these conditions, the British Medical Journal (BMJ) ranked Pakistan as the second-worst country out of 67 in terms of healthcare quality and delivery. Such conditions point to systemic strain rather than isolated inefficiency.

For young doctors graduating with an MBBS degree, the choices are stark: remain within a deteriorating framework or seek better opportunities abroad. Thousands choose the latter, joining an expanding diaspora of medical professionals who settle overseas each year.

The state’s substantial investment in training - estimated at nearly 4 million Pakistani rupees per medical student in public institutions - ultimately benefits other countries. This raises a critical question: Is Pakistan training doctors to heal its own population, or has its medical education system effectively become an export industry?

Experts argue that when a system is strained, it requires structural reform, not just human resources. Without meaningful change, it is no surprise that doctors continue to leave - and what is truly remarkable is that any still remain. This issue is not merely a narrative of emigration but a reflection of a faltering state apparatus, where healthcare professionals depart in large numbers and patients are left waiting, dependent on chance for access to care.