AFTER the death of Abdul Sattar Edhi, a great humanitarian, the nation has witnessed another loss which will be hard to fill. Now, humanity has lost another light with the death of yet another great human being, Dr Ruth Pfau.

Back in the 1960s, when there was an outbreak of leprosy, our sanitation system was rather poor.

The young Dr Ruth Pfau left everything behind in Germany, her home country, and came to Karachi, where people used to put their loved ones with leprosy in the lepers’ colony and waited for them to die there, as the disease was thought to be highly contagious.

That was when Dr Pfau decided to treat these poor patients and dedicated her entire life towards eradicating the disease. Finally, in the mid-1990s, Pakistan was declared a leprosy-free country and all her work paid off.

Now, it is time we paid homage to her and acknowledged all her services.

I call upon the government to pay tribute to her and avoid politicising her work.

Jamaluddin

Karachi

Published in Dawn, August 13th, 2017