Jobs for victims of national disasters stressed

ISLAMABAD: First Lady Mahmooda Mamnoon Hussain on Saturday urged the government and non-governmental organisations to offer jobs to the people disabled by natural disasters like earthquake to mitigate their sufferings.

She was addressing a ceremony to inaugurate a medical camp set up by the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS) and National Institute of Rehabilitation Medicine for the free treatment of spinal cord injury patients of the Oct 2005 earthquake here.

The first lady appreciated the initiative and said such steps would help dozens of people disabled by the earthquake lead normal life.

She said the 2005 earthquake had killed many and leaving thousands to suffer serious diseases which take years to be treated, like the spinal cord injury.

The first lady said natural disasters weren’t preventable but effective strategies could help mitigate the sufferings of their victims.

SZBMU vice chancellor Javed Akram said it was not difficult for the university to create nerve cells as it had already made 250 successful retinal translations, create artificial skin and establish a satellite lab, working in genetic diseases.

He requested President Mamnoon Hussain for offer financial support to the university to become the first in the country to offer Master’s and PhD degrees in spinal surgery.

The VC said the free treatment would rid the earthquake-hit patients of wheelchairs.

The VC said 32 patients were present there for spinal surgery, while around 200 more were register themselves with the camp for treatment.

The camp would provide free medical facility to the quake-hit patients, whom, Shaheed Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto Medical University Vice Chancellor Dr Javed Akram hoped would get rid of wheelchairs after spinal surgery.

Foreign-qualified Chief of Spinal Surgery of Doctors Hospital Lahore Dr Attique Durrani would regularly visit the patients at PIMS for treatment and surgery.

Dr Attique Durrani, who was also in attendance, said wheelchair-ridden patients to do whatever was humanly possible to change their lives.

Later, the VC presented a memento to the first lady, who also gave away a shield to him.