Editorial Standards

Last updated: 28 October 2026

Ask Dr. Umer is a health publication written and medically reviewed by Dr. Muhammad Umer Farooq, MBBS — a practising Medical Officer at DHQ Hospital Bahawalnagar, Pakistan (PMDC Registration 777307-01-M).

1. Sources first

• Every factual claim in a health article traces to a named primary

source: a medical guideline, a peer-reviewed study, or an official body (WHO, CDC, NIH Pakistan, DRAP, or a named hospital or health department).

• News items name their outlet and date, and quote the key figure

word-for-word with a link to the original report.

• A claim with no source is not published. If a source cannot be

opened and read, the claim is treated as unverified — never as fact.

2. Human review — always

• No medical content goes live without the author's word-by-word

review. Evergreen articles are medically reviewed before publication; news articles are re-checked on the day of publication, because figures change daily.

• Nothing on this site is published by an automated system alone.

3. AI disclosure

• AI tools (including ChatGPT, Gemini and similar assistants) are used

as a drafting and research aid — for example to summarise a long source document, to check wording, or to prepare a first draft from verified sources.

• AI never decides what is true. Every fact in every article is

checked by a human against its original source before publication, and the author takes full editorial responsibility for the final text.

• AI-generated images, where used, are labelled as AI-generated.
• This approach is what Google calls "human-curated": AI as an aid,

human review as the gate.

4. Separation of editorial and advertising

• Editorial content and advertising are separate. No article is written

for payment, and no advertiser influences what we publish.

• Any sponsored or promotional content will be labelled "Sponsored" at

the top of the article. (At the time of writing, the site carries no sponsored content.)

• The site may in future show clearly labelled advertising (for example

Google AdSense). Advertising never changes editorial decisions.

5. Updating articles

• Evergreen articles carry a "last reviewed" date and are re-checked

when guidance changes.

• News articles carry their publication date and verification date.

When an official figure changes, the article is updated the same day with a dated note — the old figure stays visible with its date.

• See the Corrections Policy (/corrections/) for how errors are fixed.

6. Language

• Articles are published in English first, with Urdu versions where

noted. Urdu translations are published after the English original, never at the same minute — each language version carries its own publication time.