Daily Times

The youth are the central pillars of a society’s future. This generation works as a mediator between the elderly and the children. They have to bid farewell to the former and welcome the latter with its energy and ideas. When the middle generation itself is struggling to survive, nobody can save the society from sinking. Such a situation must be avoided at all costs and hardest measures taken to correct the fundamental mistakes causing it.

The Pakistani society seems to be approaching a stasis. The youth are under serious attack. Around a week ago, I wrote about a hepatitis patient fighting for his life. On May 16, he lost the battle. It was a severe attack. He vomited blood. The family could not arrange a vehicle to rush him to a hospital. There was nothing to do other than sit around and watch him pass away. They borrowed some money and finally managed to rent a car to take him to a hospital in Larkana. The doctor gave him some medicine with a recommendation to take him home.

On his way home, he died. The family had kept up hope that he would survive. They were devastated.

This is just one tragic story. The country is full of them. Numerous people die everyday from preventable diseases, accidents, suicides and violence. Hepatitis alone kills about 400 people in the country everyday.

Numerous people die in Pakistan everyday from preventable diseases, accidents, suicides and violence. Hepatitis alone kills approximately 400 people everyday

The society needs to determine and address the causes for every death. We need medical research. If a death was caused by hepatitis, what were the circumstances leading to the infection? Which factors in the environment cause such outbreaks? How are people to be treated once an infection occurs?

There is a need also for life histories. The youth in my story had been a brilliant student. His skill at calligraphy was remarkable. His fatal mistake was being born to a poor family. Had he lived he might have turned out to be an artist of Jamil Naqsh’s stature. Had the environment been conducive, he might have lived. But poverty had forced him to give up school in the ninth grade. From then on he had been a daily wage labourer. He carried large rocks by hand to support his family. That was the turning point: chronic poverty forcing child to leave school.

Next, he got infected with hepatitis. But hepatitis is merely the apparent cause of death. Economic and political factors behind the poverty are the real issue to raise and address. These issues are divisive in the extreme. There are those who have to worry about obesity, caused by overeating and lack of exercise and on the other hand those are suffering from malnutrition and stunting.

The time to address the issues is now. The society is on the brink of destruction. If we do not act now, it may be too late to save the generation that must be saved. We know that nothing but disaster is to be expected when fruit-bearing trees are cut. Nelson Mandela once said, “The youth of today are the leaders of tomorrow.” What will happen if our future leaders die today? There is no time to lose. Only a few years ago we tended to think that HIV infections were a problem for Africa but could not reach us. Today, they are knocking us down.

Given the current pace of viral epidemics, one can predict that life expectancy in our country would soon decline significantly. This requires some bold, objective and extraordinary moves by those exercising power. The focus should be on social and political structures that make communities vulnerable.

All deaths are painful, but deaths of the youth and the children are always unbearable. They are clear evidences that something fundamental is wrong with our society. If we ignore the social wrongs they will overtake us.

The writer is a PhD scholar at the University of Vienna, Austria