KARACHI: A 61-year-old teacher affected by polio travelled all the way from New Zealand to provide a beacon of hope for many Pakistani children and grown-ups affected by the same disease and expressed the desire that every such person should have the ‘wings’ that helped him walk and run like a normal human being.

Gordon Jackman, who was affected by polio at the age of 10 months, was invited by the Pakistan Paediatric Associa­tion (PPA) and National Institute of Child Health (NICH) to narrate his life story about how he was leading a successful life despite being a victim of the crippling disease and spreading hope in different parts of the world.

He got people to see him strolling, running and sometimes dancing in the room of a local hotel and its corridors.

He was one of the speakers at an advocacy seminar on ‘Rehabilitation services for post-polio patients in Pakistan’ organised jointly by the PPA and the NICH with the support of a global organisation, NCD Child.

The seminar was aimed at chalking out a strategy and future plan to rehabilitate polio-affected children and grown-up men and women who were suffering from mobility issues.

“At this age, I have got my wings. I can now move everywhere in the world. These are specially designed shoes and braces. Some of its parts are produced in the United States and Australia and remaining are manufactured in New Zealand.”

He said New Zealand was a polio-free country since 1962, but “we have 8,000 polio survivors”.

“I want to extend just a single message to polio-affected kids and adults that [they] should never give up. Don’t give up! You can also have such wings; and, you can lead a normal life like me,” he added.

NICH Director Prof Jamal Raza, PPA President Prof Rai M. Asghar, Child Survival Programme project director Dr M.N. Lal, Prof Aisha Mehnaz, Prof Gohar Rehman, Dr Amna Sarwar, Prof Nabila Soomro, Prof Shazia Maqbool and Dr Maryam Mallick were among the key speakers.

They said in Pakistan there were more than 830,000 children and adults living with disability and could not move. They said there should be some comprehensive strategy and plan to rehabilitate such a large number of people.

“There should be state-of-the-art centres in all major cities and rural districts of Sindh,” a speaker urged.

The audience was informed that about 38 million people were dying in the world due to non-communicable diseases related to heart and because of cancer, smoking and obesity. A few of those diseases, they added, were hereditary while most of the others were caused by malnutrition or excessive diet.

Prof Jamal Raza said children and adults who got disabled because of polio or any other reason should be rehabilitated so that they could be given an opportunity to become active members of society.

“Rehabilitation facilities for such children are very limited. State-of-the-art centres equipped with occupational therapy, physiotherapy, and speech therapy are badly needed in the big cities like Karachi but other districts of Sindh as well,” he said.

Published in Dawn, March 12th, 2017