July 25, 2007	Wednesday	Rajab 09, 1428

MULTAN, July 24: No less than 14 members of a family have been suffering from a mysterious skin disease for the last many years in Shadan Lund, a town about 130 kilometres off here, in Dera Ghazi Khan.

Haji Kareem Bakhsh Dhingana, a 60-year-old resident of Zubairabad, was the first victim of this yet unknown disease. Bakhsh is known to have contracted this disease some 30 years ago when the skin of his feet and hands developed cracks. The affected skin would bleed during the winter season.

“I treated the disease casually because I thought that it was caused by severe cold. However, I got worried when the disease did not go away with the winter,” he told this correspondent. He said he had applied local treatment to the disease over the years before visiting the basic health centre, Shadan Lund, but the disease remained largely untreatable.

Besides visiting many doctors and trying their prescriptions, according to Bakhsh, he reposed trust in quacks but that too didn’t work. Bakhsh complained that the district health department as well as political and social figures did not pay attention to his plight. Despite the fact that representatives of various NGOs took blood samples of him and his family to be able to get to the bottom of the matter, no solid ground was covered.

The disease made Bakhsh its first victim and soon struck other members of the family. His 55-year-old wife Saddan Bibi, his three sons: Zubair Ahmed Dhingana, 30, Muhammad Sajjad, 24, Ejaz Ahmed 23, his daughter Raziya Bibi 35, two granddaughters: Hafeez Bibi 8, Mariam Bibi 6, his cousin Muhammad Umer Dhingana 45, three sons of Umer Dhingana: Hameedullah Dhingana 15, and Bashir Ahmed Dhingana, 18, and Khalil Ahmad 7, are all suffering from this disease.

It attacked the children at the age of two. The disease showed its signs by affecting the soles of feet and palms of hands and changed the colour of the skin. The patients could not walk and had to crawl on their knees. Still, some of Bakhsh’s family members remained out of harm’s way. They had to face another problem though, taking care of the affected family members besides earning their meagre livelihood.

Owing to financial constraints, Bakhsh was not able to visit a skin specialist outside the district.

Dr Ghulam Mujtaba, a skin specialist told Dawn that he was not in a position to say exactly what that disease could be unless he treated the patients. He said that it might be one of the two major skin diseases: Etidermolysis Bullosa and Hereditary Sensory Neuropathy. He said that newborn babies usually became the victim of Etidermolysis Bullosa while a patient of Hereditary Sensory Neuropathy did not feel pain in his cracks.

He said these patients could be suffering from Palmoplantar Keratoderma, a genetic skin diseases caused by lack of some enzymes in the skin cells. Cousin marriages, according to him, could be one reason of the occurrence of this disease.