LAHORE: The year 2016 had a government sweating over a prime minister’s illness, seeking to not reveal too much too early for fear of adverse public reaction.

Some 42 years ago, in an era where it was perhaps easier to control the flow of information, a trusted doctor had helped a Pakistan prime minister keep his ailment under wraps for many months.

The year was 1974. The prime minster was Z.A. Bhutto. He was treated in secret by Prof Dr Naseer Shaikh, claims an unpublished book by the doctor, a once very powerful and close ZAB ally.

It was on ZAB’s insistence that Prof Shaikh was lodged in the prime minister’s house in Islamabad for nearly five weeks, says the book, an autobiography, whose publication has been delayed because of its author’s failing health.

“Z.A. Bhutto’s illness was so tactfully managed that the public never came to know that he was so seriously ill and in fact had even mentally prepared to resign,” says a chapter of the manuscript.

Prof Shaikh recalls he first came in contact with Z.A. Bhutto in August 1971, when he successfully operated upon ZAB for inguinal hernia at his clinic in Karachi. However, he does not give the details as to which illness it was that pushed ZAB to the very brink of quitting in 1974.

In 1975, he writes, he was called by ZAB to take care of his health and was also appointed as the Director General Health, Pakistan.

He credits the rapport between him and ZAB for some of the pioneering works during the period in the health sector.

Prof Shaikh claims to have brought some fundamental changes in the health sector and credits his team for the development of three major hospitals: Islamabad hospital, Shaikh Zayed Hospital and postgraduate institution at Lahore and the Bolan Medical College and Hospital in Quetta.

Besides, he talks proudly about the Drug Act of 1976 -- which he terms as the only act since the independence up to now which controls and regulates the pharmaceutical industry.

Prof Naseer reminisces that “when Gen Zia took over on July 4, 1977 and declared martial law he arrested fifteen senior most officers of the civil government of Pakistan and detained them.” He was one of them and was picked up from his office, manhandled and humiliated and thrown into solitary confinement.

Weeks’ long interrogation by the civil and military officials followed. Most of the officials who were detained were interrogated and encouraged to give evidence and even cooked up false stories against ZAB.

He says he stuck to his honest position. He was kept in detention for eight months and dismissed from his office. His elderly parents and family also underwent severe harassment, he says.

A short-lived release and another detention later Prof Shaikh managed to escape to London via Afghanistan and Turkey with the aid of a few close friends. His entire property was confiscated by the Zia government.

In her first stint as the prime minister, Benazir Bhutto called Prof Naseer Shaikh back to Pakistan and tasked him with the reorganisation of the Pakistani embassies the world over.

The doctor is bedridden with illness in his house in Florida in the USA for some time now – which is the reason for the delay in the publication of his autobiography.

Published in Dawn September 5th, 2016