In search of a diagnosis

MULTAN: A labourer’s four children have been unable to move or talk due to a disease that local doctors have not been able to diagnose.

The affected family has appealed to the government for medical treatment. “We have taken them to all the local hospitals, but no one has given us a diagnosis,” Intezar Ahmed said.

Multan’s Bawa Sufra area resident Intezar Hussain Ahmed’s four children, 10-year-old Arsalan, eight-year-old Salman, seven-year-old Rehan and nine-month-old Mariam are unable to move or speak and the family says they have taken their children to several doctors over the years but without results. “The doctors prescribe regular antibiotics and muscle relaxants but they never tell us what is really wrong,” Ahmed said, adding that he hoped to take his children to Lahore for treatment but could not afford it. Intezar Hussain’s children remained healthy for one year after their birth but later on they all become paralysed and mute. Local doctors know nothing about the disease and have repeatedly prescribed the same treatment of ‘rest and antibiotics’. “My children don’t have the flu or food poisoning, it wont be cured by antibiotics,” Ahmed said.

Ahmed has appealed to Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif and human rights organisations for assistance in getting treatment of his children.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 30^th, 2010.