Dr Sikandar Hayat, in charge of the special medicine clinic at the DHQ hospital, said medicines in stock were enough only to continue treatment of 300 patients registered before the supply was discontinued six months ago.

He said treatment of the 1,000 patients registered after suspension of supply would resume once medicine was available.

Medical Superintendent Ahmed Naeem Shaikh said the hospital administration did not get separate funds to purchase medicine used in the treatment of hepatitis B and C. “These medicines are supplied to all public hospitals by the Health Department. The supply has been suspended for six months,” he said. The medical superintendent said he was recently told a Department official that supply would resume in a few days.

About the shortage of antibiotics, MS Shaikh said all of the funds allocated for the purchase of these medicines had been used. He said the stock would be replenished as soon as more funds were available.

EDO (Health) Iqbal Samee Khan said the federal government had recently devolved the responsibility of supply of medicines for treatment of hepatitis B and C to the provinces. “It appears the suspension of supply is linked to this transfer,” he said.

Quacks treating hepatitis patients in Kotli Loharan

A shortage of hepatitis medicine at the Kotli Loharan rural health centre is causing most hepatitis patients in the town to get treatment from clinics run by quacks.

Several residents The Express Tribune talked to said they had started visiting these clinics after being diagnosed with the disease in blood tests they got done at private laboratories in the town. They said they had gone to the RHC with the test reports but were turned away as there was no medicine.

Tariq Mahmood, who claims to have a nursing diploma, says he has at least 25 hepatitis patients under treatment at his clinic.

He says he does not have a degree in medicine but people trust his experience and visit him with their problems. He says he charges between Rs40 and Rs50 per patient.

Babar Iqbal, another quack, says he is treating about 15 hepatitis patients at the moment.

RHC in charge Dr Jahangir Qaiser says there are no medicines at the RHC. On Monday, he said, some medicine had been purchased with funds provided by two Kotli Loharan residents (Muhammad Nawaz and Shaikh Saleem) who were settled in Japan.

“Five people visited the centre with hepatitis. Three were given medicine and discharged and two are still at the centre,” he says. He says so far 11 people have tested positive for hepatitis in blood tests carried out at the RHC laboratory.

Dr Qaiser says it appears poor drinking water quality is causing the disease. He says he has learnt that the water supply in the town is increasingly contaminated. He said he planned to start listing people testing positive for hepatitis who are visiting quacks. “I have requested some affluent people in the area to pool funds so that we can buy hepatitis medicines,” he said.

The water supply tank was last cleaned five years ago, town administration chief officer Muhammad Yousaf told The Tribune. He said he had been alerted about people suffering from hepatitis. He said he would request the administration to send workers to clean the tank in a couple of days.

With additional reporting from our correspondent

Published in The Express Tribune, May 22^nd, 2012.

A sit-in was held at the Sargodha district headquarters (DHQ) hospital. Besides Paramedical Staff Associations, it was attended by representatives of Pakistan Medical Association Sargodha chapter, basic payscale-4 government employees, All Pakistan Clerks Association and Sanitary Workers Association.

The protesters demanded action against Elite Force officials Muhammad Javed and Muhammad Waseem. These officials are accused of brutally beating up a ward boy, Kazim Hussain, at the DHQ hospital’s Emergency Ward on accidently pushing a stretcher on which an Elite Force official was lying injured. The protesters said the strike at the Outpatients Department would continue until an FIR was registered and the suspects arrested.

The Elite Force officials had visited the hospital for medical treatment of a colleague injured during a physical training session.

The medical examination of the ward boy, carried out at the hospital after the assault, concluded that he had suffered multiple fractures in his right arm in the assault. PMA Sargodha chapter president Sikandar Hayat said the report had been sent to Factory Area police who, he said, had on Tuesday night turned down their application for registration of an FIR on grounds that a medical report was not available.

SHO Mirza Sadiq told The Express Tribune that they had received the medical report and were investigating the matter. He said an FIR would be launched after the investigation was complete.

Elite Force Sub Inspector Sajid Kalyar declined comment.

Sargodha DPO’s public relations officer said action would be taken against the officials if they were found guilty.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 11^th, 2012.

Talking to The Express Tribune, his elder brother, however, dismissed the suggestion that their sister could be seeing a man. He said his brother was making up the story.

Speaking at a press conference, Saddam Hussain, a resident of Chak 48 South, said that had Zafar, a resident of Chak 101 South, not fled from his house on Monday morning, he would have killed him as well. “I came in and saw the two of them together. I couldn’t think of anything but killing them,” he said.

He said first he went for Zafar but when he jumped out through the window he attacked his sister, 13-year-old Nazia Bibi, with the axe and killed her. On hearing the girl’s screams, he said, their parents came in from the other room. “They started shouting at me. I killed them as well,” he said. Hussain said later he killed his 8-year-old niece and three-year-old nephew, who were present in the house at that time, to make sure there were no witnesses left alive.

Hussain said he had warned his sister in the past to ‘mend her ways’. He said he had no regrets over the murder of his parents because ‘they had been supporting her all along’. “They deserved what they got.”

Mian Khan, Hussain’s elder brother and father of the two children he killed, rejected that their sister could have been seeing a man named Zafar.

He said Hussain was making up the story. He said his house was only a few streets from his parent’s house and that he frequently visited them. He said he had never seen any outside man in or around the house.

Earlier, the police arrested Hussain after tracing the blood-stained axe and clothes he was wearing when he killed the five members of his family in the house.

SP (investigation) Sarfaraz Nawaz said that before they had found the axe and the clothes the man had accompanied them around the house. Nawaz said a case had been registered under Section 302 and the accused would be produced in the court on Wednesday.

The deceased were laid to rest on Tuesday morning.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 20^th, 2011.

SARGODHA: A young woman who married a man six months ago filed a case against her husband for drugging her and aborting her child.

The girl accused her husband of raping her for six months after he had coerced her into signing a fake marriage certificate.  Second year student Sahar Naseem said that Muhammad Bilal had coerced her into marrying him and fabricated a marriage contract from stolen records.

“He kept telling me that he would take me home soon but we met in secret for nearly six months,” Naseem said, adding that she would leave from college with Bilal and be back in time to be picked up by her family driver.

Naseem said that six months ago she went with Bilal to a secluded house where some of his friends and a cleric performed a marriage ceremony for the couple. “We kept seeing each other after that for six months but I didn’t tell my family about what had happened,” Naseem admitted to the police.

During this time Naseem became pregnant and when she told Bilal she said that he seemed extremely troubled about the situation. “He changed immediately and told me to meet him again in two days, when I went to him he gave me something to drink and I fainted,” she said. According to Naseem, Bilal drugged her and when she woke up she was bleeding and had been dropped off near her school at one of his friends’ houses. “I argued with his friend Hassan about the abortion and told him I would go to the police,” she said, adding “he told me to go right ahead as the marriage contract was fake and I would only land myself in trouble with charges of having had illicit relations with a man,” Naseem said.

Naseem confronted Bilal about the fake document and he admitted that the wedding certificate had been forged, adding that he wanted nothing to do with her in the future. “I decided to tell my parents and they supported me. We went to the police to register a case that same day,” she said.

Sahar Naseem submitted an application with Sargodha district police officer (DPO) Nasir and the police investigated the local union council records. “There was no record of the marriage as she said and one of the council workers told us that a register of records had been stolen several months ago,” Nasir said, adding that it was likely Bilal had forged the marriage certificate from those records.

Satellite Town police station on the complaint of Sahar Naseem and her mother Bilqis, registered a case against Muhammad Bilal but investigation officer Sikandar Zulqarnain disposed off the case within a day. When asked, Zulqarnain said that he had disposed of the case on the request of the complainant. “The women knew that Naseem would likely be charged with having illicit relations and for an abortion,” he said. However, Naseem insisted that she wanted to pursue the case and wanted justice. “We have appealed to human rights groups. My marriage was real, I agreed to marry him in the presence of a maulvi and I signed the papers,” she said, adding “I did nothing wrong. I should have told my parents sooner but they support me now and he is the one who should pay for his ill intentions,” she said.

Naseem has had a medical test that has confirmed her pregnancy and the abortion and her family has charged Bilal with rape.

Names have been changed to protect identity

Published in The Express Tribune, October 16^th, 2010.

SARGODHA: Stone crushers in the district have complained that the government has failed to provide them with any security or facilities to help them carry out their work. They said that they worked extremely hard, spending their days turning massive boulders of rock into pebbles for construction purposes.

Workers at a stone crushing market near Sargodha bridge-11 said that they were considering taking out a protest against the government’s apathy regarding their working conditions and wages.

“We spend the entire day from Fajr prayers to Isha at the factory. First we crush the stone and at night it takes us a few hours to hurl the crushed stones into piles so they can be removed the next day,” said worker Imran.

The labourers work tirelessly but the lease holder and the government have yet to provide them with any safety facilities. “This is dangerous work and people get injured nearly on a daily basis,” said forty-year-old Sanaullah Khan, who has been working as a stone crusher for the past 25 years.

“When the hill was auctioned the lease holder was asked to write down facilities for the workers. The list included a dispensary, school and ambulance and the lease holder signed it several times but no such facilities have ever been provided to us,” Khan said. Ali Hasan, the father of Ali Hasnain, a resident of 110-South died six months ago while working on a hill but the lease holder for the factory refused to pay Rs200,000 insurance. Hasan’s family has still not been paid the government aid owed to them and were forced to vacate their home in the area because they could no longer afford it.

“We all campaigned on Hasan’s behalf and visited the lease owner several times but the money has not been provided. The government has also announced to provide Rs300,000 for our insurance but the money is nowhere to be seen,” Imran said, adding that stone crushers regularly received injuries and developed eye sight problems but they were never compensated.

The government Mines and Minerals Department was formed to safeguard the rights of stone crushers but the department – according to workers- has failed to secure even basic needs for the workers in the district factories.

Mines inspector for the Sargodha region, Chaudhery Khaliqur Rehman said that only the assistant commissioner for welfare has the authority to award the death grant to workers. “It is the welfare commissioner’s job to prepare a case and send it to the board,” he said, adding that the funds are only allocated after they have been approved by the board.

These mountains which are a major source of earning for the labourers often lead to serious injuries for those working as stone crushers. “We have no problem doing this work and it is hard work but we want to ensure that our families will be taken care of in the case of something happening to us,” said Sanaullah.

These labourers are forced to work hard to earn a living for their families and to service the countries construction industry.

The workers said that the least they deserved for their work was the insurance that their lives were not ‘worthless’.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 7^th, 2010.