KARACHI City is always in the limelight for one reason or another, such as terrorism, sectarian killings, overflowing gutters, traffic jams, loadshedding, etc. It is a typical example of a chaotic society where everybody is looking out only for him/herself. Still, there is some consolation here in the form of creditable setups such as Edhi, SIUT of Adeeb Rizvi, Indus Valley School of Art, etc. These have not only brought laurels to the country, but also won the admiration of the population at large.
It is a conception worldwide that Pakistanis have no time for community welfare. On the contrary, the above institutions and many more like them have come up only through the support of community.
These institutions provide much-needed relief to Karachiites and others who come here from all over the country. One such organization is the Child Aid Association, whose activities are mainly directed towards helping poor, sick children.
This organization was founded some 24 years back and its sphere of activity is mainly located at the National Institute of Child Health (NICH) in Karachi.
It has been providing free life-saving drugs, life-support equipment, food supplements for malnourished children and paying for special laboratory investigations, C.T. Scan, MRI, etc. In 1999, the association set up an oncology unit along with a state-of-the-art laboratory at the NICH through public donations.
This was a much-needed service in the province of Sindh as the poor parents were neither in a position to take their children to the Shaukat Khanum Memorial Hospital in Lahore, nor did they have the resources to pay for the treatment within the province. The only option was to let their child die.
There are various types of cancers that occur in children from birth to adolescence. Blood cancer is the most common of them all. If diagnosed at an early stage and treated according to the internationally agreed protocol, 70 per cent of childhood cancers are curable.
The average cost of treatment varies from Rs6,000 to Rs30,000 per week, for a period of a few months to two years, depending upon the type of cancer and the stage of the disease. This sum is not within the reach of even of a middle-class family.
The numbers of patients registered since the start of the oncology service reached 670 till the writing of this report. On an average, 150 patients receive chemotherapy every month.
The Child Aid Association provides funds for chemotherapy, running of the ward, day-care service and laboratory. Many children, after having completed the treatment courses, enjoy a normal life. One can see the joy on the faces of the parents when they are told that their child’s treatment is over and they can go back to school.
For them, the ordeal of threat from a deadly disease supposed to be incurable, the not-so-pleasant side-effects of chemotherapy such as hair loss, sickness during each cycle and repeated admissions for infections are things of the past.
Who is responsible for this immense happiness? One can easily say the community at large, and particularly those who care for the less fortunate in society. So in this city of turmoil, one can still find people who care for human life.
