A Kingdom for a Doctor  -letter

The Brooke Hospital is finally with us in the Kalash valleys.  The timber donkeys of Birir can expect a better future

Thanks to Raza Kuli Khan Khattak, who is a board member of KEPS (Kalash Environmental Protection Society), as well as president of Brooke’s, I attended many a dinner given by him for the administrators of this famous equinine venture.

It took much lobbying and badgering of the good people to get them to come here. Maybe my last pleas to the grand-daughter of the British woman, who started the organization in Cairo , back in the early part of the last century, went straight to her heart.

BUT please, whom may I badger to supply us with good doctors and teachers for the humans?

Recently a middle-aged woman was taken to the civil hospital in Chitral for a relatively minor gall bladder operation.  She died before a surgeon even took up a knife. An overdose of anesthetic, administered by a compounder (according to a leading Chitrali health official), killed the woman.

As soon as the current DCO, Kamran Rehman Khan, arrived in his office, one of his first acts was to demand that the hospital be cleaned.  Even a caring and competent administrator, however, can not work miracles.  If good doctors, anesthetists, lab technicians are loathe to come to Chitral, how are we going to attract qualified personnel to the valleys? One parliamentarian dismissed my idea of asking for volunteers from Europe or Australia . 

So, then, what is the answer?  Are the people condemned to inadequate medical facilities, along with all the other problems, such as elemental disasters caused, in no small part, by the destruction of the forest?

After sunset, I still encounter the smugglers, even as the flood waters continue to destroy the valley of Birir.

Maureen P. Lines

Chitral