The malnourished victims of Pakistan's floods
As the victims of Pakistan’s worst floods in history await help, Jonathan Miller writes about the story of malnourished baby Fazal.
One of the hardest things about working as a journalist in a disaster zone is that when you turn up somewhere where people are in trouble, they expect you to be able to help. But journalists are not doctors or relief workers. We travel light and our supplies don’t stretch to 5,000 people.
Even when it comes to small gifts – a token for a community – it can be excruciating because you know that your gift just won’t go very far.
It’s amazing to me how willing people are to spend time talking to a reporter just because you’ve told them that your telling their story will help people in your country understand how bad things are here. They have an innate understanding of what, at a stretch, one might call “the greater good.”
The truth is though, that as a journalist, you can feel pretty impotent, so, when confronted by the sight of a child so sick that it looks like it could die – and when you know that it’s in your power to do something – well, it’s pretty obvious what must be done.
Fazal’s mother Sajan told me she couldn’t take him to the doctor because she had no money. Again and again we’ve met people – the poorest of the poor – who had no idea that they can get free medical treatment at this time of crisis.
Ordinarily in Pakistan, government hospitals offer free service, but these hospitals are usually poorly equipped and overstretched.
In the southern city of Sukkur, where we found baby Fazal, the charity Medicins Sans Frontieres was running an Intensive Child Feeding Centre in one local hospital. We informed Sajan that if she took her 18-month-old son Fazal there, they would be able to treat him at no cost to her.
Fazal was listless and severe malnutrition had discoloured his hair. It had also dramatically stunted his growth. His mother said his condition had recently worsened and that he was in more and more pain. She had four other children and they and her husband, Mohammed, were sleeping rough, in the open. They had no food and no money to buy any.
We helped Sajan and Mohammed take Fazal to the Pakistan Railways Hospital. An MSF doctor, Babiker Ibrahim from Sudan, immediately diagnosed acute malnutrition and Plasmodium falciparum, the most dangerous strain of malaria. We later learned Fazal was responding to treatment.
Before leaving Sukkur, three days later, we checked in with the doctors to inquire about Fazal’s condition.
It turned out that his father Mohammed had earlier that day checked Fazal out of the children’s ward and taken him back to the roadside camp. The child, we were told, would still be treated by an MSF mobile team.
After all they’d been through Fazal’s family it seems, missed their village clan, and just wanted to be back amongst their own, even if it was under open skies by a roadside.