IT was a week marked by the authorities’ focus on health-related services. On Sept 14, 1971 this newspaper reported that the Sindh government was considering a scheme to divide metropolitan Karachi into four sectors in order to plan and develop health facilities in the city. Talking to newsmen, the provincial health secretary, S.M. Wasim, said tentatively health institutions in various sectors should ultimately serve as filtering units while patients deserving specialised care should receive intense treatment at the main hospitals. The scheme would also reduce the load at Civil Hospital and the Jinnah Hospital where at the time there was a tremendous rush of persons suffering from routine or ordinary ailments.

Two days later, on Sept 16, since polio was still endangering the lives of citizens and hadn’t yet been eliminated, it was announced that the local branch of the Pakistan Medical Association (PMA) had established polio centres at 12 points in Karachi. The association had appealed to the people to take advantage of the centres and immunise their children against polio. Out of the 12 centres which were to administer oral polio vaccine, apart from the PMA House on Garden Road, eight were set up in Landhi and one each in Liaquatabad, Khokrapar (Malir Extension Colony), PIB Colony and Drigh Road.

On Sept 18, the PMA claimed that its various immunisation centres in the city had immunised about 10,000 children against polio in the last few days. The highest number of the young ones was looked after in the Landhi area where 3,500 of them were given oral doses of the vaccine. According to medical experts, out of the estimated 4.2 million population of the city (that’s how populated Karachi was in 1971), 40 to 45 per cent were children below the age of 12, and all of them belonged to the category of ‘population at risk’ for contracting the disease. They believed that about six million doses were required to immunise the entire child population in the Sindh capital.

Speaking of Landhi, in those days the Landhi-Korangi Municipal Committee used to be pretty efficient. And Korangi even had an annual gala event. On the evening of Sept 16, the four-day Jashn-i-Korangi opened with an exhibition of handicrafts made by residents of the neighbourhood. Akhtar Husain, a former governor of West Pakistan, inaugurated the festival and lauded the creative talents of the people of Korangi. Among other things, the event constituted of music, a mushaira and sporting activities.

Coming up with entertaining material did not always meet with approval of all sundry, though. On Sept 19, a news item revealed that television programmes had come under severe criticism for glamourising social crimes through foreign plays and dramas, projecting undesirable scenes in advertisement commercials. The criticism came from a group of the city’s general merchants. In a joint memorandum sent to the chairman of the Pakistan Television Corporation (PTV) they strongly objected to the commercials. They argued that the adverts were full of “undesirable scenes of jumping and dancing and should therefore be substituted with graceful acting”.

Vaccine centres, immunisation, objection to commercials… do these words ring a bell? They sure do.

Published in Dawn, September 13th, 2021