A successful heart transplant of a Pakistani teenager in India is a telling tale of magnanimity and medical excellence. At the same time, it has brought to the fore the need for such interactions across the great divide, as Pakistan’s eastern neighbour is a hub for innovation and inexpensive surgical procedures, especially heart and lung transplantation. Ayesha Rashan, 19, was lucky enough to solicit an ageing but healthy heart from a 69-year old Indian citizen, and the exorbitant procedural cost too was borne by an NGO, Aishwarya Trust. Gratitude is the only least possible feeling to summarise this chapter of benevolence, hoping that such success stories must be emulated with due frequencies in the larger interest of masses, irrespective of bias and geopolitical considerations.
The details of the transplant in Chennai makes one hold the breath in a nail-biting situation. Ayesha had been rubbing shoulders with Indian doctors since 2019. A stopgap left ventricular inserted then in her heart had helped her pull on till she developed a complication on her right valve too. The entire ordeal went on for five years, and she is once again one of the few blessed souls who had an Indian medical visa in real-time to live on to tell the tale.
It may be pointed out that there are hundreds of such cases from Pakistan who are awaiting appointments from Indian hospitals, and keep their fingers crossed hoping largesse of visa approval for the patient, and their wards. This medical exigency and the scope of cooperation between the medical boards and surgeons of both the countries must swing into an apolitical and purely professional mechanism ushering in life and happiness for the needy patients.
As the Karachiite grows up hale and hearty to become a fashion designer, as per her passion, a performing Indian heart must open new vistas of greater bilateralism. Indian visitors too who can benefit from Pakistani benefaction must find their way, and let the frostiness of hate be done away with. A prompt visa issuance on medical exigency should be there in all humility.
Published in The Express Tribune, April 29th, 2024.
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