Category Archives: Archive Edition

Gift of Life

Archive Edition, Health, Organ Trade and Donation, Organ Transplant, SIUT

By Zubeida Mustafa

69-27-11-1992Two hundred children in Britain who faced certain death from liver failure are alive today and leading a normal, healthy life. They owe their recovery to the miracle of transplantation: the technology that allows surgeons to graft wholesome organs from one person to another.

Behind every milestone in medical science there is invariably a human story of sustained commitment and caring effort. In the case of these 200 British children the man who has made liver transplantation possible is Sir Roy Calne, a pioneer in the field of transplantology. A professor of surgery in the Cambridge University and president of the. International Transplantation Society, Dr Calne has contributed to the science of transplantation by his research on the immuno-suppressive drugs, without which no organ graft can be successful.

The defence mechanism of the human body normally ensures that it rejects foreign objects, which include organs taken from another person. Hence the use of drugs to suppress the immune reactions but in such measured doses that infections do not kill the patient. Continue reading Gift of Life →

Organ transplantation has come to stay -Dr Adib Rizvi

Archive Edition, Health, Human Rights, Organ Trade and Donation, Organ Transplant, SIUT

By Zubeida Mustafa

68-04-08-1992a
Dr Adib Rizvi

In the early 1970s a magistrate from the interior of Sindh died of kidney failure in Civil Hospital, Karachi. This should normally not have merited a mention, especially twenty years later. Nearly 10,000 people in Pakistan come down with kidney failure every year.

But Mr Shaikh’s death, that was the magistrate’s name, proved to be an event of far-reaching consequences. In those days there were no facilities in Karachi for dialysis (let alone transplantation) — the only process by which the life of a patient of end-stage renal failure can be sustained. Mr Shaikh was sent to London where he was dialysed for a few weeks until his budget was exhausted. He was sent home with the false assurance that he was cured. He returned to Pakistan very pleased with himself looking forward to a new life. He brought as a token of his gratitude a small gift of handkerchiefs for the urologist who had attended to him in Karachi. Continue reading Organ transplantation has come to stay -Dr Adib Rizvi →

Healthy tips

Archive Edition, Book Reviews, Children and Youth, Culture and the Arts, Education, Health

By Zubeida Mustafa

NANHAY DOCTOR by Iftikhar Ahmad. Illustrated by Nigar Nazar. Published by UNICEF, Pakistan. 1992.

67-17-07-1992With the changing concepts of health care — there is now greater stress on health education and preventive medicine — the need to teach people the basic principles of hygiene, nutrition and immunisation can hardly be overemphasised. In fact the sooner this process of health education and information begins, the better it is.

In this context, UNICEF’s Nanhay Doctor could not have been more Continue reading Healthy tips →

Increased funding amid high scepticism over real progress

Archive Edition, Children and Youth, Development and Poverty, Economy, Education, Health, Human Rights, Labour, Language

By Zubeida Mustafa

36-15-07-1988GIVEN the public outcry against the government’s failure to invest adequately in the social development of the people, the authorities in Pakistan have become more wary about making loud pronouncements about their commitment to the social sectors. What better occasion would they have of speaking about this commitment and receiving media publicity than the time of the presentation of the budgets — federal and provincial. Hence, it was no surprise that in the budget season this year each and every finance minister spoke in exaggerated terms about the social sector being his government’s major priority.

But the problem with budget speeches is that they are accompanied by budget documents and preceded by the Economic Survey which do not always substantiate the official claims. This year too the provincial governments have attempted to focus on health and education, which are central to any programme of human resource development. Although there has been an overall increase in the budgets for these two sectors, one cannot but feel sceptical about the progress that will actually be made. Continue reading Increased funding amid high scepticism over real progress →

The status of Women

Archive Edition, Culture and the Arts, Education, History, Social Issues, Women

By Zubeida Mustafa

65-05-06-1992The women’s movement in Pakistan (I use the term for want of a more appropriate one) has lost its earlier vitality. The various organisations which came together under the umbrella of the Women’s Action Forum to take up cudgels against an Establishment determined to supress the female identity, have gone their separate ways.

This is distressing because a lot of work still remains to be done to raise the status of women. Admittedly, enormous progress has been made by a small minority of the female population in the country. In the last decade and a half since the international women’s year in 1975, women have achieved what was unheard of before. The number of girls enrolled in primary schools and in the universities has doubled and the female literacy rate has gone up by five percentage points in the last decade from 16 to 21 per cent. Even the labour force participation ratio of women has risen from three per cent to twelve per cent in 1981-1991. Health-wise women’s status has improved even though marginally, and the sex ratio has risen from 90 (for 100 men) to 92. Continue reading The status of Women →