HOW does one profile a woman who has the academic qualifications and 19-year work experience of a financial journalist, but is not attracted by the aura of glamour many lesser media people like to create around themselves? Her commitment lies with the rural community in her ancestral village in Sindh but she modestly refuses to describe herself as an expert in development work. “I am still learning on the job,” she tells me.
Meet Naween A. Mangi, the Pakistan Bureau Chief of the New York based Bloomberg News since 2006. She may be a novice – albeit a devoted one – in development but in financial journalism her expertise and experience are unmatched. She has the intricacies of the stock market at her finger tips and is well-versed in the ups and downs in the corporate sector in the country. She works diligently planning coverage, filing important stories when she is required to and training and managing younger journalists, a job she excels in by virtue of her considerable experience in launching news organizations, working on the lay-out and injecting new ideas in old publications. Continue reading A silent revolution→
KHALID, who lives in Shikarpur, suffers from end-stage kidney failure. His ailment was diagnosed at the Sindh Institute of Urology and Transplantation, Karachi. I met Khalid at SIUT, Sukkur, where he was on dialysis. He is fortunate to have a donor — his younger brother. But Khalid has to wait for a few months more till his sibling comes of age.
Until SIUT, Sukkur, became operational in 2012, patients like Khalid had to visit Karachi for dialysis, and camp out on the streets. Today, the travel time has been cut immensely saving patients a lot of hassle. This is what the director of SIUT, Dr Adib Rizvi, terms “taking medical facilities to the people’s doorstep”. Had it not been for the SIUT’s presence in Sukkur, Khalid would have become a victim of homelessness as well.
Establishing SIUT, Sukkur, was an innovative response to the need of the people of Sindh. Since SIUT holds human life valuable and healthcare as the people’s birthright, the Khalids of society “are not allowed to die because they cannot afford to live”. Dr Rizvi anticipates the needs of his patients and responds accordingly.
Picture courtesy: sukkurblog.blogspot.comTo make dialysis accessible, he conceptualised a network of satellite centres in various localities of Karachi to save patients the trouble of commuting from far-flung places for this procedure twice a week. When records showed that 60pc of the patients were travelling from outside the city, mostly from Sindh, in the absence of similar facilities closer to home, the quest for a solution was launched.
This took the SIUT team to Sukkur where the Chablani Maternity Home was discovered in a decrepit state. The Sindh government was approached and much planning, renovation and reconstruction transformed this medical facility into a modern hospital that is a miniature version of SIUT, Karachi, with similar facilities and commitment to service.
This was in line with the SIUT’s need-driven approach and its philosophy of not turning back any patient who comes in search of relief from pain. With the patient-load growing as the incidence of disease in Pakistan escalates, SIUT, Sukkur, has proved to be a welcome addition to Sindh’s healthcare system.
When I visited it recently, I found it to be an oasis of modernity with state-of-the-art equipment in a sea of squalor and neglect. You enter the gate, which is barely visible in the flood of encroachments outside, and you are in another world of peace and horticultural beauty.
Many of the facilities that SIUT, Karachi, boasts of are also present in SIUT, Sukkur, which is a full-fledged 36-bed hospital that reported 1,256 indoor admissions in 2012. That year 33,918 patients went to the thrice-a-week outpatient clinic, 16,403 dialysis sessions were performed, 2,400 patients received lithotripsy, the laboratory carried out 111,913 tests and 4,254 surgeries were performed supported by diagnostic radiology services
The only conspicuous omission is transplantation. Dr Iqbal Daudpota, who volunteered to move to Sukkur as the coordinator, assures me that transplantation surgery can be started any time it is needed. As is the case in SIUT, Karachi, all services are provided free of charge with dignity.
Since a key feature of the SIUT model is the professionalism, dedication and compassion of the staff, the postings are controlled by Karachi. The staff is posted in Sukkur by rotation from Karachi. Dr Adib Rizvi, who leads by example, travels by train to Sukkur every Wednesday night for his OPD on Thursday, to return to Karachi the next day. Some of the surgeons in his team stay on to return home a week later. Thus the rota goes on.
SIUT, Sukkur, has reinforced the belief that the government-community partnership model that Dr Rizvi has been advocating is possible. The SIUT’s ethos has impressed the community in Sukkur which has responded generously with donations.
Two donors, Zahid Iqbal Choudhri and Munawwar Khan, have never let the institute down in times of crisis which are common occurrences in Pakistan. As for the patients who have never experienced such compassion and care from the medical profession ever before in their life, the SIUT is a blessing. What is important for many of these downtrodden people is that the SIUT’s philosophy facilitates excellent services without imposing any charges on them.
The SIUT model is doable if health professionals imbibe the ethos needed to provide the best services for no charge and with compassion and dignity. This calls for adopting cost-cutting strategies and shunning ostentation that make an institution self-sufficient. This is how the SIUT has won the confidence of the community in Pakistan which is reputed internationally for its generosity in philanthropy.
The writer is the author of The SIUT Story: Making the ‘Impossible’ Possible
THE health sector in Pakistan is in a crisis. Various reports and surveys paint a bleak picture which is not surprising given the breakdown in the healthcare infrastructure.
If the country has a high infant mortality rate, if polio cases have taken an upwards turn and the state of health is abysmal, prompting observers to warn that the Millennium Development Goals are unachievable, the root causes are obvious. Continue reading In a diseased state→
ONE major flaw in the education sector in Pakistan that hardly ever figures in popular discourse is the deeply rooted inequity which denies underprivileged children access to academic excellence. This is not a one-time phenomenon. It is a self-perpetuating one.
The offspring of middle-class parents face a formidable challenge when they seek admission to a public-sector medical university, let alone the elite private institutions which charge a forbidding fee. Even government institutions now impose heavy tuition charges that are unaffordable for the majority of the people. Denied education of good quality, can these children ever hope for upward mobility which comes with a good job? Continue reading Opportunities for all→
LAST Friday the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) organised a ‘March against Hunger’ to demand that the government and civil society enhance people’s awareness of their right to basic nutrition and food security through combined efforts.
I think this event was most timely given the utter lack of public understanding of the issue. One example of poor knowledge of the subject was an observation on my column ‘Whose land is this?’ (Nov 20) where I had pointed out the adverse impact of our failure to introduce land reforms as being the “rise in food insecurity” leading to nearly 50pc of Pakistan’s population suffering from malnourishment.
A reader noted that if high levels of malnutrition in the country were a fact, people would be dropping dead in their hundreds, and that villagers produced enough food for themselves and the country. Continue reading Why they don’t drop dead→
