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The clinic was two hours away
A diagnosed condition went untreated for a year — not for lack of a diagnosis, but because the follow-up cost a day's wages every month.
Patient · Medical assistance recipient · Peri-urban Lahore · 2 Aug 2026
“I was not refusing to go. I could not afford the day.”
The diagnosis had been made a year earlier at a government hospital. The medication was affordable. The problem was the monthly review: two hours each way, plus the fare, plus a lost day of work.
At a mobile medical camp four kilometres from the house, the condition was picked up again during routine screening. Since then the review has happened at the camp, the medication is dispensed on the day, and no wages are lost.
This is the argument for camps over clinics in these settlements. The barrier was never the treatment. It was the distance.
This work sits within our medical assistance programme.
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