Grief and anger as relatives identify victims at JPMC

Shazia Hasan

The father of one of the blast victims, Shahzad, being brought out of the mortuary of the JPMC by his colleagues on Friday. — Fahim Siddiqi/ White Star

KARACHI: There were four bodies in the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre (JPMC) mortuary two of which were identified soon after being brought there on Friday afternoon.

Two young men sat weeping quietly on the bench outside the mortuary. “They are in no condition to speak to anyone. Their brother, Sajid Elahi, has been identified as one of the dead. Another elder brother is inside with the body,” said a friend trying to console the young men.

“We are residents of Delhi Colony. My brother had gone to say his Friday prayers at Jama Masjid Faizan-i-Ilahi. We were at home. I was dozing when the blast jolted everyone in the house. Our mother tried Sajid’s number but got no response. His phone was off. That’s when we hurried to the site of the blast,” said the victim’s elder brother, Sohail Ahmed.

“But this is where we found him,” he broke down looking around inside the morgue.

Shiraz Ali, a Chhipa ambulance driver there, said that he had brought in the body of Shahzad Hussain, a young man. “One side of the body is ridden with ball bearings,” he said.

Shahzad was identified by his colleagues who then informed his father. “He is ... he was ... our assistant manager at the Bareeze shop in Clifton,” said one of his colleagues, Mohammad Fareed Khan. “He usually ate with us at the shop but today he had a craving for something from outside. He was out on a lunch break at the time of blast. Our entire building shook from it,” he added.

A few other colleagues of Shahzad were coming towards the mortuary with an elderly man. Two supported him by putting their arms around his shoulders. “I run a vegetable business at Guru Mandir,” said Ali Hussain, the father. “I got a call from my son’s colleagues and rushed here. I haven’t told anyone at home. They know nothing. Shahzad is the third of my six sons,” he said, his eyes brimming with tears.

Another distressed individual outside the morgue was screaming in frustration. “How do you expect us to identify the body when you are not even letting us see it?” he cried.

He was referring to the only woman’s body in the mortuary. The man was there with another who claimed his wife was missing. “We live in the same house. I live on the upper portion and he and his wife are on the ground floor. We have just retrieved a purse and a mobile phone from the hospital’s emergency department that belongs to Bhabi but there is only one woman among the injured there and her husband is with her right now. That leaves the dead woman. We are here to identify her but aren’t being allowed to see the body until we prove that we know her. How do we do that?” The neighbour, Uzair Tehseen, questioned.

The husband looking for his missing wife was finding it very difficult to form words into sentences. A while later he managed to mumble something about her wearing a printed yellow shirt with white shalwar when going out of the house that morning. But the dead body was clad in pink and grey shalwar kameez. A piece from a rickshaw jutted out from her remains. “No that can’t be her,” the helpful neighbour concluded when informed about the details of her clothing. “It’s not her,” he said to the worried man with him looking for his missing wife.

Meanwhile, strict security outside the JPMC emergency department prevented almost everyone save VIPs and politicians from going inside. A man holding his injured nephew in his arms cursed the hospital authorities. “I need to take him inside but just because he is not one of the bomb blast injured, we can’t go in,” the man complained.

A man with a bandaged leg was being carried away on a stretcher by his relatives. “God has been kind. He saved my life today,” said the man, Waqar Feroz, who added that he was just passing through the place on his motorbike at the time of the blast.

Another injured and semi-conscious man was being shifted to the ward. “His name is Mahmood Kazmi. We work at the CM House,” said his colleague who declined to disclose his own name.

Sindh Health Minister Dr Sagheer Ahmed while addressing the media with Dr Seemin Jamali, head of the JPMC emergency department, said that they had been hearing all kinds of things that perhaps a car in some passing convoy was the target or the mosque was the target. “But only experts can tell us more regarding the matter. Still, the casualties and most of the injured happened to be common pedestrians coming out of the nearby mosques after saying their Friday prayers,” he said.

Dr Jamali said they had received some 30 wounded of which five were critical and four dead of whom one was female.

Pakistan to be the last place where polio will exist, WHO meeting told

Asif Chaudhry

File photo

LAHORE: Recent reports have painted a bleak picture of Pakistan’s fight against poliovirus.

“Pakistan which currently stands at the top in the last three polio endemic countries in the world for housing big wild poliovirus (WPV) reservoirs, will be the last place on earth in which polio exists,” is a disturbing information shared at a meeting of the Strategic Advisory Group of Experts (SAGE) held in the first week of this month in the World Health Organisation’s headquarters at Geneva.

SAGE is the principal advisory group to the WHO for vaccines and immunisation.

A senior government official told Dawn that a brief of the meeting, released this week, depicted the level of concern of the world about the persistent emergence of the wild poliovirus in Pakistan.

The full meeting report will be published in the WHO Weekly Epidemiological Record on May 23.

The SAGE meeting was called in the aftermath of the resurgence of polio cases in the polio-endemic countries — Pakistan, Nigeria and Afghanistan. Pakistan is at the top among other endemic countries, with 50 wild poliovirus cases in the current year so far.

Earlier, he said, the WHO had predicted India as the last ‘polio-endemic country’ because of the size of its population and ‘unmanageable’ health infrastructure but it surprised the world by getting the polio-free nation status.

Peshawar, Fata and Karachi remained the centre of discussion at the meeting due to persistent wild poliovirus transmission.

“The current situation in Pakistan is a powder keg that could ignite widespread polio transmission,” the official quoted the report as saying. The government has been slow to grasp the fundamental seriousness of the situation. “If the current trend continues, Pakistan will be the last place on earth in which polio exists,” it said.

Another report compiled by local offices of the international polio eradication partners, including Unicef and WHO, last week revealed an alarming situation in respect of refusal cases and the increase in the number of polio cases. “Pakistan continues to be the country with most polio cases in the world this year followed by three in Afghanistan and one in Nigeria,” said the report.

The official said this week five new cases were reported in Pakistan (two wild poliovirus type 1 — WPV1, and three circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus type 2 —cVDPV2). Four of the cases were from Fata and one from Gadap in Karachi.

The officials were shocked to learn that out of the total 50 children who were paralysed by the wild poliovirus in Pakistan so far, 44 were reported with zero-dose.

Forty-one of the cases were reported from Fata, eight from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and three from Sindh. Balochistan and Punjab reported no polio case.

In the report, Unicef and the WHO noted that the number of unvaccinated children in Pakistan had shot up to an unexpectedly high level. The calculations showed that KP reported 700 refusal cases, Punjab 404, including 250 in Rawalpindi, Sindh 386, Fata 269 and Balochistan reported 251 refusal cases during the last round of polio vaccination.

Giving comparison of the cases with the last years, the report said, one polio case was reported in Pakistan by the end of April in 2011, two in 2012 and 12 cases in 2013 but the cases reported in the same months in the current year were hundred times more.

Rawalpindi has been forecast second ‘Peshawar’ for housing a large number of migrant families who come from Fata, Bajaur Agency, North and South Waziristan, Mohmand Agency and Afghanistan.

Peshawar had again been declared a major reservoir for poliovirus transmission.

According to the WHO the densely-populated Peshawar valley is considered to be the main ‘engine’ of poliovirus transmission, alongside North Waziristan, due to large-scale population movements through Peshawar from across this region, and into other areas of Pakistan.

Haemophilia: some tips

THIS is apropos the piece written by your staff reporter on April 18 on the occasion of World Haemophilia Day.

I have a haemophilic son who is 34. As such, I have been researching the subject since his birth and would like to share the following information with readers. Haemophilia is referred to as a royal or blue-blooded disease because it occurred mostly in families of monarchs and nobles due to in-breeding. The most famous patient was the son of Russian Czar Nicholas.

Haemophilia is a genetic disorder which reduces blood’s ability of clotting due to deficiency of clotting factor VIII or IX. Internal bleeding causes swelling of joints and severe pain. There is no cure but it can be controlled by transfusing bags of blood products such as cryoprecipitate (CP), fresh frozen plasma (FFP) or vials of the deficient clotting factor (VIII or IX, as required) for relief from pain and swelling or to stop external bleeding after injury, surgery or tooth extraction.

Haemophilia is caused by a defective X chromosome in the DNA or genetic code which is passed on from father to daughter and from daughter to son. The symptoms of the disease show up only in males because they have only one X chromosome (the other being a Y) while females are carriers having one healthy and one defective X chromosome. The healthy X chromosome ensures adequate production of clotting factor in females.

Haemophilia is usually diagnosed after circumcision because the bleeding does not stop easily. The boys can lead a healthy and productive life if immediate medication is provided by keeping a vial or two of the clotting factor at hand.

As a precaution against hepatitis from infected blood products and syringes, they should be vaccinated against hepatitis B as soon as haemophilia is diagnosed.

To prevent descendents from inheriting the disease, girls must be tested for factor VIII or IX deficiency before marriage. If the level is below the minimum limit of 50pc, they are carriers and will produce one affected offspring out of every two.

Haemophilic boys should either not marry, or marry infertile women. In any case, they should not father children as their daughters are bound to be carriers, who are instrumental in propagation of the disease.

A.J.

Karachi

Import regime

THIS is apropos Qamar Iqbal’s letter (April 20).

There is a dire need for revisiting our entire import regime. All those articles which are imported, specially for edible usage, need to be reassessed if they are safe, halal and, above all, if we really need those to import.

If the need is there, we should ensure that the exporting company should give a certificate from a competent authority of the exporting country that the cargo is safe, halal and, above all, fit for the purpose for which it has to be imported.

Secondly, importers must ensure that consignments are sold to only bona fide consumers.

Also, an authority similar to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) should be established in Pakistan. This body should monitor the quality of all edibles, like the Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan.

This includes minute details like monitoring of cleanliness of pharmacies, temperature maintenance there and proper record keeping of those drugs as well which are to be sold on prescriptions alone.

This has been made possible with the joint efforts of the trade and the government and is very much evident now, specially in big cities like Lahore, Rawalpindi and Islamabad, where there has been a mushroom growth of chain pharmacies.

I believe it could be replicated in the case of the food sector in the shape of chain stores, selling all sorts of edibles and grocery items, in standard packing and some chain sort of restaurants where consumers are satisfied with the quality of stuff they buy because of the goodwill of the seller.

For this, provincial and other regional bodies should work on the guidelines issued by the federal government.

Mumtaz Ahmed

Lahore

Sectarian violence

Editorial

Updated a day ago

HOW many have died in sectarian violence in Pakistan since 2008? More than 2,000 was the answer Minister of State for Interior Balighur Rehman gave in the Senate on Wednesday. The bald number may be grim enough, but so are the details that Mr Rehman shared: from Fata to Islamabad and Balochistan to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, no part of the country has been spared sectarian violence. What the raw numbers do not tell though is the evolving pattern of the violence. What began as targeted killings of members of the Shia community (and, on a much lesser scale, reprisal attacks against virulently sectarian Sunni elements) has now escalated to indiscriminate attacks on markets, buses, religious sites and really any place where a gathering of a particular sect can be identified and targeted. It is a war on entire communities, even if it has not reached anywhere near the term ‘genocide’ that is unhappily bandied about without much regard for reality. What is real is the pervasive fear that has gripped certain communities and many parts of the country.

What happens next depends on how seriously the state takes the threat and how the communities themselves react. So far, other than in small pockets, there has been no communal violence, but tensions are rising because of the continuing proliferation of hate speech and paraphernalia. The question is really that of a tipping point and how far society is from it at the moment. Historically, despite all the allegations of a proxy Saudi-Iran war playing out inside Pakistan, sectarian violence has been sporadic and, usually, quickly contained. Part of that may have to do with demographics, as the sectarian equation is not overwhelmingly lopsided and sects are not confined to a few geographical zones, so there is much side-by-side existence. In fact, the communities do mingle and mix a great deal. Yet, this much is also clear: the historical pattern can be changed and tolerance can be eroded if elements bent on doing so are allowed to operate freely and the narrative of hate is not pushed back against.

So, what is the state doing about any of that? The interior ministry provided the province-wise breakdown of sectarian violence over the last six years, but how many of the murders have been investigated, how many of the killers identified and how many prosecutions secured? Surely, it is only a fraction, if that, of the violence that has been enumerated by the interior ministry. Meanwhile, the tentacles of fear continue to spread. In Karachi, the Majlis-i-Wahadat-i-Muslimeen have claimed several Shias have been killed in recent days, while the Ahl-i-Sunnat Wal Jamaat has alleged their members have also been killed. And Karachi is just one part of the national sectarian cauldron that is bubbling ominously. Does the state have any answers?

One shoe fits all

Editorial

Updated about 7 hours ago

THE list on the internet says it was Pakistan which began the trend, reviving a way of showing disapproval that dates almost to the time when man first learnt to take aim. Six Aprils ago, Arbab Rahim, a former Sindh chief minister, was attacked with a shoe as he came to take oath as a member of the provincial assembly.

For the attacker, democracy which had brought his party to power was not revenge enough. Since then, shoes have been lobbed at various venues around the globe, and this manner of ugly protest was, on Thursday, once more visible when the chief minister of Punjab found himself at the receiving end. In between, a Chinese leader has been subject to a limp shoe attack — in Cambridge of all places.

The then US president George Bush, too, has been targeted in Iraq, and only recently former secretary of state Hillary Clinton managed to duck one in the US. In India, politicians such as Manmohan Singh and L.K. Advani have been aimed at and our very own Gen Pervez Musharraf has been a recipient both in his country and abroad. The Iraqi who threw the shoe at Mr Bush was paid in the same coin in Paris later.

The reaction, generally, has been sober. In a majority of cases, the targeted leaders chose to take these attacks in their stride, avoiding additional embarrassment. Some damage was, of course, done, but the incidents did provide the leaders with an opportunity to be magnanimous and forgiving.

Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif reacted similarly on Thursday when he ordered the release of the shoe-throwing journalist, who, it was learnt to the general satisfaction of the surprised gallery, had his origins away from Punjab.

This was the right response. It allowed for the freak incident’s quick removal from the media radar, after the efficient security and agitated party workers had done their best to make a prolonged unpleasant spectacle out of it by thrashing the offender.

Power sector reforms

Editorial

PRIME MINISTER Nawaz Sharif has promised to bridge the electricity supply gaps in the country in the next two and a half years and add 21,000MW of new power to the national grid over eight years. Both are difficult targets Mr Sharif has set for himself. He, however, seems to have been encouraged by an earlier-than-scheduled commissioning of the two gas turbines at the Guddu thermal power project and the inauguration of the Uch project-II this week.

The expansion of the Guddu project has already added 486MW to the national grid, and the completion of the third turbine next month will take new generation from the project to 747MW. The Uch project will add another 404MW to the system. At the same time, work on several hydel and thermal power projects has already been initiated with financial assistance from multilateral and bilateral donors as well as Chinese and domestic investors.

The completion of these projects will certainly mitigate the pain of industrial and domestic consumers who are suffering from long power cuts despite paying a price said to be the highest in the region. Indeed, the Nawaz Sharif government is more focused on removing the electricity supply gaps than its predecessor. Even a partial success in implementing the proposed projects will significantly bring down the duration of the power cuts by the end of its term in 2018.

But the focus on new generation is not enough. The government should also be implementing the required power sector reforms that it had promised in its energy policy last year. For example, the government has so far done little to check power theft, reduce transmission and distribution losses and recover unpaid bills from public and private defaulters.

Nothing has been done to improve the management of or stop rampant corruption in public-sector power companies. Consequently, we are seeing a fresh build-up of the inter-corporate power sector debt of slightly less than Rs300bn in nine months after having retired the previous one of Rs480bn last June.

The economy and consumers may continue to suffer power cuts and pay a high price for a much longer period than the one stated by Mr Sharif unless governance reforms are implemented in the energy sector.