Absent today.

Byline: Hajrah Mumtaz

DEEPLY sad as it is, but unfortunately common in this benighted land, another person I know suffered tragedy due to the lack of adequate healthcare services.

The person in question, let's call him H, is from a family I've known for three generations. He and his wife live in a village about an hour and a half from Islamabad, in the employ of fairly well-heeled people that have taken care, as much as is possible, of them. The patriarch of the employer family spent a childhood climbing trees with this young man's father.

To cut a long story short, H's wife fell pregnant with their first child. The doctor's clinic in the area, as well as check-ups arranged in the capital, said that all was going well - the child was a healthy baby girl and given the parents' ages, and lifestyles, there would 'probably' be no issue - because of course while medical science is precise, for a given value thereof, it is never definitive.

As is turned out, the lady went into labour at five in the morning, in the village, while the child was in the eighth month of gestation - which is reputed as the most dangerous month for premature births. The husband searched desperately for a way out - clearly a medical intervention was urgently required, his wife was in a massive amount of pain, and he was lettered enough to know that an intervention was possible. They had already been told that it would probably be a C-section birth, but there had been no indication that it would be premature.

Over the years, the state has abdicated even its basic responsibilities.

But in a village, in the wee hours of the morning, of course there was no medical help. The clinic was closed (not that it was a surgery in the first place), the doctor's whereabouts unknown (whatever his qualifications may be). There were no buses and no taxis to get down to an urban area where perhaps it may have been possible for some good souls who took the Hippocratic oath to attempt some lifesaving medical intervention.

As is turned out, therefore, the very unfortunate young lady gave birth to a girl, on her own and without succour. The infant died a few hours later. Speaking to H last week, commiserating with the family for loss and bereavement, he of course had only one thing to say, that trope common in our culture: it must have been God's will. She came from there, and it was her fate to go back; that might be so, but it's heartbreaking that it had to happen so soon.

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