Whose lives matter?

We will all soon forget about the infants who died at the Sahiwal DHQ hospital due possibly to the air conditioning failing in the children's ward. The story will vanish from the media, discussion on it will cease and only the families will remember the children who passed away in such grim circumstances. An inquiry into the incident is being conducted by the Punjab health ministry. There are reports which suggest the death toll was higher than five. Staff at the hospital are stressing it did not occur due to the failure of an air conditioning unit – in a situation where temperatures are climbing towards the 50 degree mark in the south of Punjab – but due to their health conditions.

This however is somewhat irrelevant. The fact is that like these infants at Sahiwal, many children die daily because of neglect and our failure to offer them adequate nutrition or healthcare. The treatment of such deaths is as disturbing. They simply do not matter. We do not know their names, we do not know where they lived, we do not know what kind of lives they lived and we do not know what the future held for them. All that makes the news is the report of their death, and in many cases even the deaths go unrecorded and unknown to anyone beyond the immediate circle of the victims.

In many countries, perhaps most countries, news of at least five and possibly more infants dying at a government hospital would have created a storm. Protesters would have gathered, the media would have highlighted the sequence of events. Perhaps even heads rolled at the highest levels. In our case, there has not even been a resignation reported so far. The lives simply do not matter and do not concern anyone. Certainly, they are of no consequence to a nation that has other matters to think of: shopping has begun for Eid in some households; other families wonder how they are to even put food on the table for this occasion. Joblessness continues to increase, conditions are hard, children die like flies but no one is moved. As a nation and as a society, we have failed. In Sahiwal, the key question is not the issue of precisely why the children died. The issue is why we allow so many similar incidents to happen and so many to go completely undocumented. This is a sad testimony to the situation we have reached. We do not really have any respect or any regard for people around us, and it is this which results in their deaths and the indifference which follows such tragedies.