Look elsewhere!

The ideals of gender equality, human dignity and standing up for minorities are the best of human values. But these ideals are nothing but hollow slogans if the realities on the ground defy these values. The sharp rise in HIV cases in Larkana paints a picture of a system that does not work for the poor, the vulnerable and the weak. The system is broken and has long lost its ability to heal.

The home base of a party that claims to champion the causes of social justice shows a world where the party ideals do not seem to matter at all. The HIV cases are not an anomaly. The HIV cases are indicative of a health system that is fractured and is toxic to the very people it aims to serve. While the classes get treated in better hospitals elsewhere in the country or abroad, the masses suffer through a system that is built on nothing but empty slogans.

In the light of the HIV challenge, the response from leaders of the party is deeply troubling. Those who have spoken have taken one of two routes. Many have blamed a couple of quacks for the sharp rise. This is both bizarre and factually incorrect. The problem is much bigger than quacks and doctors engaged in the malpractice. Patients suffering from HIV have not been able to get diagnosed properly due to lack of functioning equipment or due to the AIDS control programme that the provincial authorities have failed to implement properly. There has been contaminated blood in the blood banks. More importantly, this is not the first time Larkana has seen the problem. The recent surge comes on the shoulders of prior spikes, most notably in late summer of 2018.

Some other leaders have taken a different route. They have accused journalists and opinion makers of harbouring an anti-Sindh or anti-PPP bias. The party cadres insist on looking elsewhere — in Punjab, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan — as these provinces are facing similar problems in case of other diseases.

This is offensive, not to journalists, but to the people of Larkana. Sindh’s health indicators are among the worst in the country, and are often worse than the war-torn regions in the world. I have routinely criticised the party in power at the Centre on a number of its policies in education, science and health. Journalists, opinion makers and experts have raised similar issues about the current or previous governments at the Center and in the provinces. The party that claims to represent the weak and the downtrodden, and speaks on social justice, ought to realise that social justice requires justice in all domains, including health. Social justice is not a phenomenon to be embraced just by a tweet, it has to be fulfilled at every clinic and in every school.

The life of any individual, no matter which province he or she lives in, is equally sacred. Just as those who defend the law that enables the vultures and pedophiles to prey upon innocent young girls — in the guise of marriage or forced conversions — are party to the heinous crimes committed against our children, those who try to deflect the suffering of the HIV patients are guilty of creating permanent misery.

Perhaps there is no giant conspiracy, internal or external, from the IMF or the Asian Development Bank, or from any neighbor or a particular party within the country. Next time, when our people are confronted with yet another challenge, when the children scream and the mothers weep, we shouldn’t ask people to look elsewhere for the cause. There is only one place to look — in the mirror.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 7^th, 2019.

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