| August 02, 2008 | Saturday | Rajab 29, 1429 |
Surviving the monsoon
Children fall prey to polio due to Taliban’s folly
THE sights are familiar and so are the sounds. The cacophony raised by buses is still as jarring and the body-breaking craters on the roads are still as bruising. But while the landscape remains the same, there is a sense of great despair and an even greater desperation writ large on people’s faces. Living seems to have become a great burden.
SOME 48 years after the first brick was laid to build a new capital, the mandarins of Islamabad have begun to take its road users on a journey marked by basics: using seatbelt.
The august beginning on First August is apart from measures banning the use of cellphone while driving and the knockout full beam that had been in vogue until now — very much like that (k)night in the shining armour!
The attempt for sane driving had been in the works for a while and many of us in Islamabad with a similar bent will, doubtless, welcome taking the road less travelled.
However, it remains to be seen how a large swathe of the capital’s population takes to the road reform given as they are to reckless driving in pursuit of speed thrills and flashing that high beam, which knocks the light out of any vehicle in its gaze.
Thanks to the absence of any punitive measure, the “beamers” — as one friend calls the beam purveyors — use the glowing light as if it was a showpiece ware.
It is inappropriate to use high beam for regular headlights given the dazzling distraction it causes to drivers in other vehicles.
In Islamabad, in-your-face “beamers” are a dime a dozen. They blaze a disturbing trail with abandon, knowing there is little chance they would be brought to justice. But to the original sin must one return: the virtual non-existent use of seatbelt and the nagging use of cellphone while driving.
Many have come to grief for lack of knowledge surrounding the benefit of using a seatbelt — a ‘life-saver’ in half the cases. But one suspects buckling up is, for many, a nuisance that trifles with their apparent ‘machismo’.
Similarly, listening to a cellphone while driving is probably, considered cool or else it is hard to imagine why would so many people risk their lives — and those of the others — by trying to pull it off like a stunt.
It doesn’t take genius to figure out that you cannot concentrate on two things at a time with the same intensity. Steering the wheel with the necessary pace and keeping the required distance in a moving traffic — all the while using a cellphone — is but potentially, only an accident waiting to happen.
According to Islamabad Traffic Police (ITP) statistics, 147 people died and 161 were injured in road accidents in the capital last year. Figures until May 28 this year show 25 fatal accidents in Islamabad, resulting in the death of 26 people.
The ITP puts 87 per cent of the road accidents down to negligence of drivers — be it overspeeding, overloading or wrong overtaking.
This data does not configure the incidence of death and vehicular destruction resulting from failure to use ‘safety belt’ — as the seatbelt is called in common parlance.
Similarly, absent is specific information related to cellphone use in contributing to the accident.
Amazing still, is the non-adherence to the safety regimen despite the high incidence of collision, both fatal and non-fatal. Nonchalant attitude on the road, in Islamabad, is not limited to the youth only — there are plenty of gentlemen and the odd lady, who have similar road rushes.
Failure to wear a seatbelt contributes to more fatalities than any other single traffic safety-related behaviour — a shame considering wearing one is still the single most effective measure to save life and reduce the chances of injury.
The ITP has launched a campaign to educate drivers on the efficacy of using seatbelt and the pitfalls of using cellphone while driving but, from most accounts, the campaign itself lacks intensity and is not ideally spread out.
To be sure, such a drive alone, however, cannot help rein in careless youth and those dashing car owners, who set store by class distinction in elite-conscious Islamabad. It seems they simply do not believe they will be injured or killed. Yet, they are the capital’s highest-risk drivers. It will take stronger seatbelt laws and high visibility enforcement campaigns to get them and the others to buckle up.
Clearly, the ITP has its task cut out given that many road adventurers will find the penalty of Rs300 for each offence perhaps, just a small change.
The writer is News Editor at Dawn News. He may be reached at kaamyabi@gmail.com
The homecoming after twelve months to this city we love and simultaneously love to hate, is melancholic. While it is a pleasure to stop at Café Quetta for paratha and chai, it is impossible to ignore the burnt facades dotting familiar surroundings, bearing testimony to the physical beating that Karachi has withstood – a tangible reminder of the huge emotional trauma the city has borne this past year. More heartrending is the visible strain brought on by shattered economics on middle- and lower-class households. Beggarly pleas of “Baji roti dilado” have increased drastically. Since daal at over a hundred rupees a kilo and naan hovering between five and ten rupees have pitiably lessened the daily meal intake of the labour class – survival has definitely become a gruelling game of grit.
But ‘economics’, I discover, are only the tip of the iceberg. Fear of the unknown future has never been so high before. “Karachi has become unliveable.” “Don’t ever think of returning.” Such is the advice I am dished out. But how can an individual who has lived, learnt and attained a modicum of success in this very same society which appears to have lost its intellect, abandon the past? Karachi, with all its ethnic segregation, still holds its vibrant multicultural ties tenaciously and is perhaps the only South Asian city to do so. Nowhere else will warring factions sit in harmony side by side eating qeema ghotala at the nearby khokha during lunch time discussing electricity and water woes together. While their politics might differ, their daily woes definitely unite them!
The fearful whispers of a Taliban takeover (of Karachi) too have taken a more dramatic turn of late. But then how come the number of the jean-clad working women has increased? “No, don’t you see all the burqa-clad fundamentals flooding the city? The Taliban are ready to take over, I’m sure,” says one lady. I wonder if she has been to see the new play in town yet which deals with corrupt women and their murderous shenanigans replete with raunchy cabaret numbers? What a huge wow THAT was!
So what if there are more burqa or hijab clad individuals around? Karachiites have always been a live-and-let-live breed? If I see more young girls observing hijab I also notice more jean-clad women in public transport. Theatres and coffee hangouts were once the domain of the elite, now youngsters from all segments of society indulge in all such pastimes. This happy union of all beliefs has been a Karachi hallmark. Unfortunately, it has become eclipsed by a culture of mistrust.
The Pushtoons, Muhajirs, Baluchis and Punjabis have lived in the city together since the early years. While they fought on many issues they always kissed and made up, continuing to keep Karachi their dwelling place. The cultural divide couldn’t be the basis of the ravages that Karachi has seen of late. The marauding has been done only by professional marauders. Who they are or what their agenda is, is staple of numerous conspiracy theories. And to thwart those violent plans should be the agenda of all true Karachiites.
The monsoon in Karachi brings with it heavy rains, clogged drains, broken roads, traffic jams and breakdown of the electricity network– a trailer of which we saw a few days ago. But while the rain aftermath was habitually destructive, the sights and sounds of Karachi on a rainy day have never looked more pleasant to me. Breaking the gloomy aura of a ravaged landscape were the street children playing in muddy puddles; a pickup full of youngsters singing the latest Indian film number and motorcycle revellers heading straight for Seaview to make merry. That is a scene no first-world country can offer. And THAT is what I would want to return for. The present times are Karachi’s extended monsoons. Our test is to withstand the downpour and show the doomsday pundits our resilience and ability to survive all storms.
MORE than one dozens international donor agencies have been pouring about $1 billion to the anti-polio campaigns annually, but the crippling disease shows no signs of abating in the NWFP and Fata.
Of the total, six children tested positive for polio this year in the Frontier. The Taliban can squarely be blamed for at least three polio victims, two in Swat and one in Bajaur -- the strongholds of the Taliban. In these areas children remained un-immunised due to Taliban’s stubbornness regarding the polio vaccination. The problem has further been exacerbated by the Taliban’s denials that they weren’t opposed to polio, but the ground realities depict a picture quite contrary to it.
“We are neither opposing polio vaccination nor have we prevented the parents from getting their children immunised,” Tehreek-i-Taliban spokesman Maulvi Omar had told Dawn last month. Similar was the reply of Muslim Khan, a spokesman for the Taliban in Swat. The Swat Taliban had also pledged to support the polio campaigns in the ‘peace agreement’ with the provincial government on May 21.
What happened on June 9, the second day of the sub-national immunisation drive in Swat, is deplorable. Vaccinators were not only beaten up, their vaccine carriers were broken and documents were confiscated by militants in Nazirabad locality of Matta tehsil.
They warned the vaccinators that they would be killed if seen in the area again. Thus the vaccination drive was stopped. Subsequently, two children below one-year of age tested positive for polio on July 16 and 21 in the Hazara locality. In Bajaur Agency, a 16-month-old boy became crippled for his entire life due to the Taliban’s folly.
One wonders, if the Taliban really know about polio and its impact on the victims and their families. If they are in the knowledge that polio destroys the future of its victims, then they must allow oral polio vaccine (OPV) in the fulfilment of their Islamic duty of ensuring child rights and child protection against violence and diseases.
So far their opposition to OPV is based on their opposition to the US-led war on terrorism. The Taliban have assumed that the OPV was a tool allegedly used by the US and its allies to “cut the population of the Muslims by rendering its recipients sexually infertile and impotent.” This belief is quite wrong. People have been receiving the OPV for the last 30 years but they are potent and fertile.
Saudi Arabia has made it compulsory for all intending pilgrims to get polio vaccines before proceeding for Haj and Umra. There are several edicts (fatwas) by different scholars stating the OPV as Islamic and the basic need of children. The strong opposition from the militants against polio vaccination is also evident from some parents’ refusals to immunise their children in other districts sporadically.
Not only the Taliban, but there are also other obstacles standing in the way of smooth and error-free polio campaigns. For instance, the way the polio campaigns are launched, gives an impression as if all other childhood ailments had been completely disappeared from Pakistan except polio.
The massive arrangements, including press conferences by ministers and UN representatives, seminars and walks on the occasion of polio immunisation days create doubts in the people’s minds as if something wrong was being done to their children.
Every year, there are at least seven national immunization days in which the children below five years of age are administered OPV to safeguard them against poliomyelitis. During each immunisation campaign, the health workers visit each house with immunisable children at least 10 times, which gives birth to suspicions in people’s minds that why the health workers were so good that they themselves were knocking at their doors.
On the contrary, they suspect that why nobody was concerned to ask them about other diseases haunting their children now and then. Paediatricians say that polio was a dangerous disease that crippled the victims, who become permanent liabilities on their families, but the way the campaigns are carried out, is highly objectionable.
For launching every immunisation day campaign, every district of the country gets Rs30,000 for tea and banners etc. Extra amount is paid to the health workers, bulk of which goes to the pockets of officers, who perform supervisory duties. The vaccinators, who carry out door-to-door visits to reach every child, are given only Rs120. the government has been setting deadlines upon deadlines for elimination of the disease, but it re-emerges every year.
Pakistan has so far recorded 20 polio cases this year and stands alongside India, Afghanistan and Nigeria, which according to the WHO were still polio endemic and hence responsible for transportation of virus to the countries that had long been declared polio-free.
Pakistan is spending $75 million per year on vaccines manufactured by the WHO-approved companies. The government should do soul-searching to eliminate the disease once and for all and allocate polio funds to other childhood diseases before it is too late.
