Cardiac institute plan

THE Punjab government’s decision to develop the Faisalabad Institute of Cardiology (FIC) on the pattern of the Punjab Institute of Cardiology (PIC) in Lahore has caused disappointment among the people of Faisalabad district and adjoining areas, who were previously appreciative of the Punjab Chief Minister’s announcement about the establishment of FIC at the official residence of the defunct Deputy Commissioner on an area of 12 acres. Being the second biggest district of the province with a population of seven million, the citizens and social and trade bodies have been agitating for decades for the setting up of a full-fledged cardiac centre here for meeting the needs of the people.

One must give credit to the Punjab PML secretary-general and the provincial minister for communication and works, Chaudhry Zaheeruddin Khan, who earlier prevailed upon the Punjab chief minister for grant of approval of funds and project sanction. Practical shape to the scheme was first given in July 1999, when Dr Muhammad Naeem Aslam took over as Head of Cardiology Department of Punjab Medical College and moved a request for allocation of land for it.

Upon this demand, the land was allocated in September 1999, in the vicinity of Allied Hospital. Subsequently, layout maps were prepared by director (architecture) and two deputy directors and PMC’s head of cardiology in 2000-2001. It took more than a year to complete the design and layout map, which were finally approved in 2002 with a lot of improvements and amendments. The PC-I of the project costing Rs998 million was approved in October 2004. However, funds could not be released for reasons best known to the provincial health and the works & communication departments. In the meantime, the Punjab CM formally announced that a full-fledged cardiac institute would be set up here for which initial funds of Rs1 billion would be allocated.

During the process of implementation of the decision for establishment of FCI the bureaucracy adopted its traditional methods for maintaining its hold over the institution and for achieving this goal, at the very outset threw the most modern design and approved PC-I in the dustbin. The bureaucrats also declared that the design would be prepared exactly in line with the old PIC of Lahore. Not only that, the bureaucracy also decided to run the affairs of FIC under the direct command and control of the PIC, Lahore. All local NGOs, trade bodies, and representatives of society, especially the local charter of the Pakistan Medical Association, viewed this development seriously. According to them, such a decision was tantamount to depriving the people of the area of much-needed cardiac treatment and aid. These circles pointed out that the FIC had in fact been established as a semi-autonomous body to provide immediate relief to patients coming from areas outside Lahore. However, with the decision of provincial health authorities not to involve any local specialist or doctor of PMC, the people of the area were certainly not going to get any relief. First, because doctors and specialists of the PIC are already overburdened and cannot pay the desired prompt attention to cardiac patients from outside Lahore.

It may be noted that the very objective of the FIC was to reduce pressure on the PIC, Lahore, and provide relief to patients coming from the mufossil, who were suffering and facing a lot of problems regarding their stay in Lahore and admission to the PIC. In this context, a standard health institution at a place like Faisalabad was the need of the hour.

The Multan Institute of Cardiology is already operating under the direct control of the PIC, Lahore, which has created a wrong precedent on one hand and divided the doctor’s community on the other. The Board of Management of PIC is also working as Board of Management of MIC. The executive committee of MIC consists of PIC MS Professor M. Azhar. Director Finance of PIC, AMS PIC, Professor A. Waheed, Surgeon of PIC, additional secretary (Development) of the Health Department is technical officer of the MIC and drawing Rs35,000 per month as project allowance.

The regular office of project director, Prof M.A Cheema (Ex-Prof of PIC), is in the PIC. None of the committee members has ever visited the MIC. The posting of staff, whether paramedical, medical or consultant, is made at PIC. No person from Multan was recruited in the medical or paramedical cadre. None of the cardiologists of Nishtar Medical College was offered any job at the MIC. Both professors of cardiology from Multan (Prof SAR Gardezi and Prof Raja Zafar) applied for posting at the MIC, but were rejected and posts were kept vacant. Dr Bilal Qureshi from Multan appeared for the post of Associate Prof of Cardiology, but failed to get an appointment in MIC. Similarly, for the two posts of assistant professor of cardiology, no person from Nishtar Medical College or Quaid-i-Azam Medical College was given appointment. One wonders why such hard facts were not given due consideration.

Likewise, one is perturbed to note why the health department has decided to replicate the PIC maps of 1985 for FIC without any alternation, lagging 20 years behind instead of looking ahead. Apart from this, if one compares the Institute of Cardiology with similar institutions of other countries, including India, the PIC design looks very obsolete and shrunken. Additionally, there were many shortcomings in the 1985 map of the PIC, which had to be rectified at huge cost. Sewerage ducts were concealed in hostels and hospitals. Water seepage was everywhere in the PIC, giving an ugly look to hostel and spoiling things around. Initially, the emergency room of the PIC was only 12 bed. Later, new emergency blocks were constructed in the car park area. Washrooms were inside the ICU, CCU and Operation Theatre, resulting in post-operative infection. All those had to be demolished and shifted outside. Echo room, ETT room, conference room and Lab area and angiography ward had to be redesigned and modified. Why is the same story being repeated in Faisalabad?

Over-sensitive to bad news?

ARE Pakistanis in the Gulf over-sensitive when news reports that are adverse to their country appear in local newspapers? I can hear the protests already, but please bear with me; this is not — I repeat not — my viewpoint. On this occasion, I am merely the humble messenger, and the story follows.

Earlier in the week newspapers throughout the world reported on the bombings in Sharm El Shaikh and subsequently on the fact that the Egyptian government had said they were looking for — amongst many others — six Pakistanis.

“Egypt hunts for six Pakistani suspects over resort blasts” was the front-page headline in the Dubai daily Gulf News. It was an angle to the story that was reflected in newspapers throughout the Middle East, although with varying degrees of emphasis on the Pakistani “link”.

I do not know the size of the email in-box at the Gulf News letters page, but I hazard a guess that it was very soon approaching the full quota level as Gulf Pakistanis responded with fury. Shock, bias, sensational, unfair, baseless and yellow journalism were among the words used in the letters that the newspaper subsequently printed.

The general feelings of many Pakistani readers were summed up by the Dr M.Z. Iqbal, the press counsellor at the Pakistani consulate in Dubai.

The headline, he said, was “utterly misleading, biased and damaging” and did not merit being the main story in the newspaper.

“It seems that an arbitrary and whimsical editorial decision was made to highlight the ‘Pakistanis’ which is not only a gross violation of pristine journalistic morals, which have always been the hallmark of your newspaper, but has also brought a bad name to our country.

“We expect an impartial, scrupulous and fair reporting/policy from the newspaper of the calibre and repute of Gulf News,” said Dr Iqbal. He suggested that President Musharraf’s denial of Pakistani involvement in terror attacks in London, Istanbul, Egypt and Africa, which was carried on page 27 of the newspaper, should have been the front-page story.

Other letter writers suggested that the newspaper was biased against Pakistan, and therefore, by implication, was pro-Indian.

“Even on other stories, your newspaper only highlights the events that present Pakistan in poor light, whereas a neighbouring country’s negative news is always glossed over,” said one reader.

This, I have to say, is a common complaint about the English-language newspapers here in the Gulf but, to be fair, for every such letter they receive from a Pakistani, there is another from an Indian reader who complains that the bias is in the opposite direction.

As a ‘neutral’ in such matters and having been involved with newspapers in this part of the world for many years, I can honestly say that the journalists I have encountered — and the majority come from Pakistan and India — have always tried to “report it as it is”.

As long as they continue to receive complaints in equal numbers from the two communities, they can presume they are doing a reasonably balanced job.

The Gulf News, however, was not prepared to take the criticism without fighting back. It highlighted the fact that newspapers everywhere — including Pakistan — reported the hunt for the six Pakistanis in a similar vein. But editor-in-chief Abdul Hamid Ahmad — and before anyone asks, he is a UAE national — had a sting in the tail of his refutation of bias:

“We call upon our Pakistani readers to take a dispassionate look at the news and not wear the badge of perceived ‘unfair discrimination’. Be objective in your criticism. “We will be the first to accept any misjudgment on our part. But are our Pakistani readers ready to do the same?

“Among the many nationalities in the Emirates, it is most often Pakistanis who take umbrage to and are most sensitive about any news they construe to be unfavourable to them or their country. But surely the silent majority among the community are more astute and discerning than that.”

I have a feeling we have not heard the last word on this subject...

AFTER much delay, the Pakistani consulate in Dubai this week started issuing machine readable passports with the ambassador, Air Marshal (retd) Syed Qaiser Hussain, pointing out that it is one of the first missions around the world to introduce the documents which contain numerous security features.

The application procedure is simple with no forms to complete and applicants only having to show their National Identity Card for Overseas Pakistanis (Nicops) to an immigration officer and have their photograph and fingerprints taken.

The details are then sent to Pakistan for the passport to be produced.

So much for the good news. The downside is that the average time for issuing the passports has gone up from seven to 14 days (although in reality it has been taking much longer) and even an urgent passport will take a week. So much for progress in this electronic age.

Pakistan before ummah

‘PAKISTAN First’ was the two-word manifesto President General Pervez Musharraf gave to the nation in one of his major policy addresses.

In his July 21 address, the president spoke repeatedly and emphatically of the nexus between Pakistan and the ‘ummah’. ‘Pakistan’s destiny,’ he said, ‘was closely linked to that of the ummah’ as the ummah’s only nuclear and major military power.

Pakistan’s leading role in the global war against terrorism and proactive contribution towards “collective efforts in world affairs should put the ummah on the road to progress,” he said. Regrettably, however, the ummah as a whole was on a ‘descending course’. In spite of owning 70 per cent of the world’s energy (oil/gas) and 40 per cent of other natural resources (manpower, geo-strategic pivotal land-mass, etc), the ummah stays in the backyard of international affairs.

President Musharraf’s oft-repeated formulation seems to indicate that he regards Pakistan as the pivotal state of the ummah. The ummah, as a body, looks up to Pakistan for moral and physical support mainly in military terms, conventional and nuclear.

Hence the president’s own thesis of ‘Strategy of Enlightened Moderation.’ In simple language, this offers a judicious synthesis of Islam as a complete code of life and its updated relevance and application to our complex, modern world.

The strategy seeks to establish Islam as a living and thriving faith rather than a dogma split within by so many contending states, sects and cults. Might it not be a better idea, however, to do without the prefix ‘strategy’ attaching to ‘enlightened moderation’ No matter how we put it, the mere use of the word gives the theme a military dimension and restricts its conceptual and political scope.

It’s good news that the OIC has accepted ‘enlightened moderation’ as a guiding principle at the summit level. It is now in the process of finalizing its recommendations to give a ‘new dynamism and character’ to the organization and adopt this at a special summit in Makkah.

But how effective has the OIC been in serving as the representative body of the ummah and finding for itself a place on the world map as the saying goes, its constituents sit, talk and disperse. It seems to stay perennially in a state of suspended animation without its feet firmly planted in the grim ground realities facing the Muslim community.

And what is ‘ummah’ all about? Is it a league of Muslim (Islamic?) nations or just a conglomerate of countries professing the same faith, each in its own way and according to its own laws of jurisprudence and theology to suit its own national ethos.

Therefore, how can any country, even one militarily and physically as strong as Pakistan, aspire to the status of first amongst equals? Furthermore, would it not be wiser for Pakistan to first put its own house in order before aspiring to a leadership role in the ummah? Not to speak of countries as far apart as Morocco and Indonesia, Pakistan has a long way to go yet to mend its fences with neighbouring Afghanistan and Iran. One is aggressively proactive, the other discreetly quiet but hardly as happy as one might want it to be.

Besides in sheer sweep and diversity the ummah defies centrality and anything even approaching a unified, conceptual structure. The Islamic world today looks collectively as mutually divergent as ever. For Pakistan to beguile itself into the wishful thinking that it is being viewed as the leader of the ummah, besides meaning little, may even harm it in terms of realpolitik.

Pakistan’s sincere desire and effort to act as a laboratory for modern Islam has all but drawn a blank. It is time for us to turn inwards for the warts and moles waiting for overdue surgery rather than look outwards.

The crying need of the hour is a grand national reconciliation in the face of the mounting threat of fanaticism and intolerance in the name of Islamic jihad. The mere use of jihadi terminology inviting youth to wage a jihad against ignorance and extremists tends to keep the jihad image and vocabulary alive. Whether Jihad-i-Akbar for economic development or social sanity, the primeval image of jihad remains that of an armed crusade against infidels and renegades.

Rather than worry too much about the ummah, our guiding motto should be ‘Pakistan First’.

The writer is a retired brigadier of the Pakistan Army.