Premarital blood screening bill

Letter July 30, 2016
Consanguineous marriages are risky as children born of them suffer from several congenital problems and disorders

TURBAT: The PML-N government recently moved a bill in the Senate titled the Premarital Blood Screening (Family Laws Amendment) Act 2016, which demands couples to check the spread of transmissible diseases or to make blood tests compulsory before marriage to restrict inherited blood disorders and birth defects.

Evidently, consanguineous marriages are risky as children born of them suffer from several congenital problems and disorders that include blindness, cerebral palsy, mental disorders, thalassemia, physical deformities and hearing and speech impairments. Such children also have low rates of survival. The essential and specific objective of the bill is to prevent the spread of transferable maladies. It is applicable to not only Muslim marriages, but the Christian Marriage and Divorce Act and Parsi Marriage Act as well. After the legislation, marriage will not be considered valid without the report of blood screening and the couple will be bound to get a medical certificate from the doctors concerned.

According to research conducted by relevant bodies, in Pakistan, 77 per cent of babies born with birth defects belong to parents who were in consanguineous marriages while the number of HIV infections in Pakistan grew at an average of 17.6 per cent a year from 8,360 to 45,990 during the period 2005-2015.

Undoubtedly, it is a good initiative taken by the government and apparently, there is nothing in the draft that violates Islamic laws. However, we hope that the Council of Islamic Ideology will give its contributions to help the ministry for further movements.

Zeeshan Nasir

Published in The Express Tribune, July 31st, 2016.

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