THATTA, Dec 29: A team of doctors on Friday appealed to the authorities concerned, HRCP, NGOs and social workers to help release dozens of mentally ill patients who had been put in cages or chained to trees at the shrines of Shah Yaqiq and Jalali Baba near the coastal town of Chuhar Jamali.

The team that wound up a three-day free medical camp at Shah Yaqiq village and taluka hospital Chuhar Jamali, told reporters at the local press club that they were shocked to find scores of mentally and physically ill patients suffering untold agonies either caged or tied to trees with chains as if they were still living in stoneage.

The team’s head Dr. Karim Khwaja who is also provincial chief of People’s Doctors Forum said that during their stay, the team paid frequent visits to the shrines of Shah Yaqiq and his elder brother Jalali Baba and found out after examining the victims that they suffered not only from psychiatric but also neurological illnesses. Many others had hepatitis and still others were in bad need of surgery, he said.

Dr. Karim said that the patients’ relatives and attendants believed that Shah Yaqiq had the cure for diseases that needed surgery and Jalali Baba held the power to heal the mentally ill.

The attendants told the team that patients came to the two shrines from Balochistan, Punjab, interior Sindh as well as Afghanistan. They kept visiting the saints for months and some of them for years in the shallow hope the practice would cure them or their loved-ones of the often deadly diseases, he said.

He said that the doctors succeeded in convincing some attendants who were responsible for looking after more than two dozen ill people into getting their patients proper treatment.

The team provided them free medicine and treatment, Dr. Karim said adding that the custodians of the shrines and their agents who were the sole beneficiaries of the superstitious practice were obviously the greatest obstruction to providing the poor patients medical help.

The doctors expressed regret that even in this age of stupendous scientific achievements in every field of life people were wasting their time, money and potential on such stoneage superstitious practices.

They appealed to the President Pervez Musharraf and authorities concerned, HRCP, NGOs and civil society to help the suffering humanity by banning such inhuman practices at the shrines and also make arrangements for educating people about the subject.