Pakistan acid victims rebuild ruined lives
Acid attacks on wives ‘at all time high’
At four years old, Gul-e-Mehtab already knows what she wants to do when she grows up.
This little girl, whose name means “moonlight flower”, wants to be a doctor in order to heal her own mother, Manzoor Attiqa.
“She says: ‘Mama when I grow up, I will become a doctor. I will treat you, and then you will be perfect’,” Manzoor says, with a proud smile.
Twenty-two-year-old Manzoor is a patient in surgical ward 10 in Benazir Bhutto hospital in the Pakistani city of Rawalpindi.
Manzoor says the attack followed a row over doing the dishes
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The ward is a cluster of women in brightly coloured shawls, who share the same scars and the same trauma. All have been attacked with acid.
There are no reliable national statistics, but campaigners estimate that there may be as many as 150 victims every year.
It is an intimate crime – often carried out in the family home, by husbands or in-laws.
Manzoor’s attack followed a row over doing the dishes.
“It was seven o’clock in the morning, and I had just finished making breakfast,” she says.
“My daughter was crying so I picked her up, but her grandmother said: ‘Leave her and wash the dishes.’ I told her that I would wash them, and that we had the whole day ahead of us. After this, they started beating me. I was unconscious for four or five days. I woke up in hospital in Lahore.”
While she lay unconscious, Manzoor was drenched in acid. It devoured her lower lip, neck and shoulders and left her chin fused to her chest.
But when she speaks of the in-laws she blames for the attack, there is no bitterness. In spite of her injuries, and her suffering, she says that she has forgiven them.
“They are like my own mother and sisters,” she says. “I just pray God shows them the right path, so they can’t do this kind of thing to anybody else. I forgave them, so that they could realise they did wrong.”
Get the sellers
When we meet Manzoor, she is about to have her sixth surgery – performed free by a group of Pakistani experts, and British volunteers, led by plastic surgeon Charles Viva.
The retired NHS doctor, with a snow-white walrus moustache, has spent decades treating the poor around the globe, including many victims of acid burns.
Retired plastic surgeon Charles Viva has treated many acid burns victims
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“I feel very passionately angry about this because God has made us whole, and for somebody to do this causes a lot of distress for the patients and their families,” he says. “We do what we can to give the women back their dignity.”
In Manzoor’s case, this means grafting skin from her leg on to her neck, so that she can lift her head fully.
Mr Viva wants action against those who sell the acid, not just those who throw it.
“I think we need some very strong deterrents to prevent this happening,” he said.
“I think it’s essential that the government and the authorities should target the people who perpetrate the crime, and those who supply the acid. They are just as guilty for giving the acid.”
Two hours later, Manzoor is back in ward 10. Her surgery was a success, but it won’t be her last.
‘It didn’t end my life’
Opposite her, in bed nine, Saira Liaqat is recovering from her latest operation – her 18th. Her face is still bandaged, but already she is sitting up, supported by her mother, Gulshan.
A medical file rests at the end of the bed, with photos of a striking girl in a gold headdress. That was Saira seven years ago, before she was attacked.
Saira Liaqat was attacked several years ago, but has plans for the future
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Acid has erased any resemblance to the pretty girl of the past, but it has not crushed her spirit. Since the attack, she has trained as a beautician.
“I want to own my own beauty parlour,” she says.
“I want people to say ‘that’s the girl who suffered and didn’t lose hope’. I want to support my parents as well as a son can. I want to show that person that even though he threw acid in my face, it didn’t end my life.”
Saira’s husband is still on trial for her attack. If convicted, he could get between five and 14 years. Gulshan wants an eye for an eye.
“He should either get the death penalty, or have acid thrown in his face, so he knows how it feels,” she says.
“The law is weak in Pakistan. If criminals like him are given a tough punishment immediately, then nobody will do this kind of thing.”
Campaigners are calling for the introduction of life sentences. They say that while Pakistan is finally waking up to this issue, there is still a long way to go.
“At the highest level, people like the chief justice are taking acid violence very seriously,” says Valerie Khan of the Acid Survivors Foundation (ASF), which helps many of the victims.
“In the past six months, we are seeing higher sentences being handed down. But the vast majority of women are unable to even register a case. And police are still turning a blind eye, due to corruption and social pressure.”
While she slept
One of many still waiting for justice is 23-year-old Naseera Bibi.
She is friendly and talkative, in spite of her debilitating injuries.
The acid thrown in her face, while she slept, ate through her nose and both of her eyes. She believes her husband was the culprit.
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 I’ve learnt how to knit sweaters and my children are back with me. I can’t just sit around and lose hope  Naseera Bibi
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She says she heard his voice next to her, as the acid melted her skin, telling her to say it was someone else.
“I started screaming. Then I heard my husband telling me whoever asks you who did it, just say it was Javed. I told him that I haven’t seen anybody. He kept insisting whoever asks you, just say Javed did it.”
Naseera’s main concern now is how to provide for her children, without her sight.
“I’ve been taken to about 10 doctors, but there doesn’t seem to be a chance of restoring my eyesight,” she says.
“I’ve been very upset about this, because I have become a burden. But the ASF sent me to a school to study. I’ve learnt how to knit sweaters, and my children are back with me. I can’t just sit around and lose hope.”
Like other acid attack survivors in ward 10, Nazeera has been robbed of her looks, but not of her courage.
She has two dreams for the future – to send her children to school, and for her attacker to be punished.
Reference Link
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8609512.stm
Courtesy
BBC News
The Strength Of Four
The BRIC summit, which will take place in Brazil on April 15-16, 2010, is a young forum that nevertheless has gained great international recognition from the outset. And this is no surprise, since its member countries comprise 26 per cent of the world’s territory, 42 per cent of the world’s population and 14.6 per cent of the world’s GDP. In recent years, BRIC’s share in global economic development has exceeded 50 per cent.
What place does Russia hold in this group of states?
Overcoming the impact of the global crisis, our country is following the path of comprehensive renovation at the same time. Our key objective is to achieve sustainable economic growth and an increase in the income of citizens on the basis of a diversified economy, modernised technologies and an innovative development model. We increasingly invest in further outer space exploration, energy efficiency improvement, development of nuclear and alternative energy, information, telecommunications and new medical technologies and drug development. We attach great importance to processing of minerals, which constitute Russia’s riches, as well as agricultural production. I am convinced that our BRIC partners will find these Russian achievements useful.
For our part, we have been following with interest and appreciation the dynamic development of other alliance members. A combination of the relative competitive advantages of our countries is beneficial to all in many fields, and offers us unique incentives for cooperation. Many of such advantages have already been made use of.
Here is one example. At a recent meeting in Moscow our agriculture ministers have decided to establish a joint database to assess the state of food security in the BRIC countries and promote cooperation in the field of development and exchange of agricultural technologies. Such technologies are intended to reduce the negative climate impact on food security, and ensure adaptation of agricultural industry to climate change.
There are also wide opportunities for multilateral cooperation in the field of nuclear energy, aircraft engineering, exploration and use of outer space and nanotechnologies. Such cooperation can be enhanced through establishing financial interaction of the BRIC countries, in particular in the form of agreements on the use of national currencies in mutual trade.
In our view, joint economic security measures are also important, such as mutual information exchange on possible speculative attacks at currency, stock and commodity exchanges.
We appreciate the active and creative efforts of the Brazilian chairmanship that brought BRIC cooperation to a qualitatively new level. BRIC has recently held a number of very useful meetings of finance ministers, senior representatives on security issues and officials of development banks. What is especially important is that our cooperation is expanding due to involvement of business communities and civil society. Today, Brazil is hosting the meeting of representatives of commercial banks, as well as of the business forum and conference of scientific and research centres of the “quartet”.
Since the first full-scale BRIC summit in Yekaterinburg (June 16, 2009), we have managed to make a good start in many areas of work that we have identified. Thus, our states are active in the Group of Twenty that has become the main mechanism for coordination of international efforts aimed at establishing a new system of global economic governance. Thanks to a common approach, we succeeded in the redistribution of 5 per cent of voting shares in the IMF and 3 per cent in the World Bank in favour of emerging and developing economies at the G-20 summit at Pittsburgh. We advocate the adoption of clear “rules of the game” that would ensure equitable participation for all G-20 members in its activities.
In addition, BRIC countries will be pushing for a successful accomplishment of the long-overdue reforms of the Bretton Woods system now underway. I believe we could also join our efforts to promote the development of the G-20 action programme in the post-crisis period and make our joint contribution to this work.
By strengthening the economic framework of the multipolar world, BRIC countries are objectively contributing to creating conditions for strengthening international security. We share an imperative that the international community should resolve conflicts through politico-diplomatic and legal means, rather than the use of military force. In our view, it is necessary to strengthen collective principles in international relations and to establish a just and democratic world order.
Russia, China, India and Brazil actively cooperate within the United Nations. The most notable example is co-sponsorship by these states of UN General Assembly resolutions on matters related to the prevention of placement of any kinds of weapons in outer space and non-use of force against outer space objects.
I am confident that cooperation among our countries has a great future. Although we are just at the beginning, the solid foundation of our dialogue in the BRIC format reliable and mutually beneficial partnerships allows us to count on the success of this promising forum for the benefit of our countries and peoples.
The writer is the president of Russia.
Reference Link
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/opinion/edit-page/The-Strength-Of-Four/articleshow/5788658.cms
Courtesy
Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd.
New treatment to cure arthritis
British scientists claim to have developed one-off treatment which could potentially help cure rheumatoid arthritis.
The crippling joint disease is triggered by attacks from the body’s own defences.
Research team hopes that the drug, called otelixizumab, will turn off this response by the immune system, placing the patient into remission for years and potentially forever.
The trials are due to start next month and, if successful, the drug could be available to patients within a decade.
“The theory is that treatments like this can switch off the disease,” telegraph.co.uk quoted Prof John Isaacs, professor of clinical rheumatology at Newcastle, as saying.
“There is the potential that this switch off could last forever. Perhaps this would only be in patients who we treat at the early stage of the disease.
“However, the chance of this happening in patients who have had the disease for a while is not altogether absent,” he added.
The drug targets T-cells, white blood cells which control the body’s natural defences. These cells are believed to send signals to other cells in the body to attack the joints.
If these signals can be “switched off”, doctors can potentially halt the disease at its source.
Reference Link
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/life/health-fitness/health/New-treatment-to-cure-arthritis/articleshow/5786478.cms
Courtesy
Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd.
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