Shahzaib Bajwa's family facilitated in best possible way: Foreign Office

FO spokesperson says family of comatose Pakistani exchange student in US was issued visas on one-day notice.

The Foreign Office on Thursday said the family of a comatose Pakistani exchange student in US has been facilitated in the best possible way, Express News reported.

Briefing the media, the foreign office spokesperson said the family was issued visas on a one-day notice and was also given $90,000 as financial assistance.

Muhammad Shahzaib Bajwa, 20, was spending a semester in an exchange programme at the University of Wisconsin-Superior, studying anthropology and sociology.

On November 13, 2013, he and his friends were driving back to the university from Minneapolis when their car struck a deer, his brother Shahraiz Bajwa said.

He added that the family is struggling to keep Shahzaib from being sent home as his visa expires, because that would evidently mean his death.

What was meant to be an academic semester abroad through a State Department-backed exchange programme has turned into a Kafkaesque journey through US insurance, medical and visa regulations for the family from Faisalabad.

The brother said that the insurance company was pressing the family to sign off on returning Shahzaib to Pakistan once his visa runs out at the end of the month, threatening not to pay evacuation costs if the family refuses.

“My mother is not going to sign because that would be like killing her son with her own hand,” the brother told AFP.

Accident

Shahzaib suffered severe facial fractures as the deer’s antlers pierced his face and broke his nose, although he was still able to speak when he arrived at a hospital in Cloquet.

He choked on his own blood there and went into cardiac arrest, but was resuscitated and transferred to Essentia Health-St Mary’s Medical Centre, his brother said.

He suffered brain damage and a heart attack, and still remains comatose. The doctors have told the family it would take a couple more years to find out how much more the 20-year-old will recover, Shahraiz said.

Recovery

Shahraiz said his family had limited means, and their mother is a widow. He questioned whether his brother would survive 24 hours’ journey on board a plane and, even if he does, whether he would receive quality care in Pakistan.

“Some of the US doctors are very positive about his recovery, saying he is young and intelligent. Sending him back to Pakistan would be pushing him off the cliff,” Shahraiz said.

Shahraiz said that the hospital, Essentia Health-St Mary’s Medical Centre in Duluth, Minnesota, had provided his brother’s $350,000 worth of treatment for free. The insurance policy under the exchange program covers $100,000, which would go toward evacuation and treatment in Pakistan, Shahraiz said.

An Essentia spokeswoman, Maureen Talarico, said that the hospital could not keep Bajwa beyond February 28 when his visa runs out as his stay in the United States would be illegal.

Talarico said that the hospital was coordinating with the State Department “to make sure that the transition is as smooth as possible in this obviously unfortunate situation.”

But a lawyer for the family, Saiko McIvor, said she was hopeful for reaching an agreement to extend or issue a new visa for Bajwa beyond February 28.

Shahraiz said that the family was under “huge stress.”

“Things are tightening around us and it’s getting worse,” he said.