Resilient nation

On Saturday, I had the opportunity to attend an amazing TEDxLUMS event where I got to listen to Dr Faisal Sultan, former special assistant to the PM on health, who spoke about Pakistan’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Dr Faisal said that data-driven decisions played a key role in ensuring we took sprinklers where there were fires instead of hosing down the entire building. He shared that one day, Mr. Asad Umar, the Chair of the NCOC at the time, gave them the seemingly impossible task of administering around 300,000 COVID-19 vaccines in a day.

This was huge because in Pakistan, we didn’t have any national vaccination programmes for adults. However, despite multifaceted challenges, from procurement to delivery, on peak day, the team managed to administer 2.3 million doses. I think this represents a great example of our resilience as a nation and shows that we can overcome any challenge if we set our minds to it and if our institutions work collectively towards a unified goal.

Mariam Khan

Lahore