Where medical negligence reigns

Without any medical assistance, Sajida’s breathing stopped.

ISLAMABAD: Sajida Parveen was a 22-year-old resident of Mallot Sattian, a village near Tehsil Kotli Sattian. She will not be with us this International Day of Rural Women. On the morning of October 13, she had breakfast with her sister and four brothers.

“An hour later, she complained of a stomach ache and started vomiting,” recalls her elder sister Naheed, straining to hold back tears.

“We took her to the Rural Health Center (RHU) of Kotli Sattian but Dr Sajid just injected a drip and then left her,” said Naheed. The doctor told them to bring the girl to his clinic (a considerable distance from the health centre) as he headed out the door.

Sajida was suffering from dysentery. Her uncle Rab Nawaz claims that when her condition worsened, there was no medical assistance available.

“She was left to Allah’s mercy, fighting for her life, we were shouting for a doctor but none came,” said Naheed. As Sajida’s breathing stopped, so did her family’s screaming.

These are not the only domestic voices that have been plunged into silence.

Unavailability of health services in the area cause women in this rural are to die every second day.

This isolated incident simply portrays the living conditions of our rural women on International Rural Women’s Day. While it is celebrated around the world in an attempt to empower them, our rural women do not even know that such a day (or term) exists.

The theme for this day this year is ‘Claim your and your daughters’ right to education’.

Shopkeeper Shafqat Hussain does not send his two daughters to school because there are none available in Mallot Sattian. The closest girl’s school is in Kotli Sattian, almost 5km from his house. “The only affordable way for them to go to school is by public transport, I will not stuff them in vans full of men,” he said.

Afshan Jabeen, a resident of Mallot Sattian had three miscarriages in two and half years because she kept carrying heavy buckets of water from the top of a nearby mountain.

“No water is available here, we have to go far to fetch water for our family and such domestic chores are our first responsibility,” she added.

She was recommended bed rest during her pregnancies but her mother-in-law would tell her, “Water for the born is more important than resting for the unborn.”

Sabheeha, a lady health worker in Kotli Sattian said there were no maternity centres available in the area and that pregnant women had to travel to Rawalpindi or Islamabad for complications.

“Sometimes deliveries take place in the car during travel,” she added. She further claimed that her pay was a meagre Rs3000 and even that was never given on time.

She said the Ministry of Health was not providing them basic medicines.

Dr Fehmida Mirza, speaker National Assembly in her message on World Rural Women day, accepted that due to social injustice, domestic violence and unavailability of basic facilities like health and education, rural women had remained a weak and deprived segment of the Pakistani society.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 15^th, 2010.