People collect donations across KP to help affectees of lockdown

PESHAWAR: The kind-hearted people all over Khyber Pakhtunkhwa have responded enthusiastically to provide support to those affected by the lockdown caused by the coronavirus outbreak.

In almost every village across the province, the well-to-do are reaching out to those in need whom they know well and trying to help them. Pakistanis are giving people as studies have shown and they give more during emergencies.

As Ramazanul Mubarak is less than a month away, this is the time when the faithful give more. The month of fasting this year is arriving at a time when the number of the needy people has suddenly registered a sharp increase. The smaller organizations operating at village level appear to be the most active in collecting donations to buy facemasks, soaps and food rations for the poor. In many places, the soaps with water are kept outside the mosques to enable the faithful and others to wash their hands to avoid getting infected.

The federal and provincial governments have also announced financial assistance for those who lost livelihoods due to the lockdown. However, it won’t be enough and, therefore, philanthropists have to chip in to reduce the suffering of the poor and the jobless.

Philanthropists such as Samiur Rahman, a businessman from Mardan, have given big donations. He provided medical equipment valued at around Rs10 million to the Mardan Medical Complex (MMC) recently.

His son Umair delivered the donation at the hospital, where the first coronavirus patient in Pakistan, Saadat Khan, died after contracting the disease in Saudi Arabia where he had gone for Umrah. Other donors may also have helped local hospitals, but nobody knows where and when donations were given. Perhaps Samiur Rahman’s example would inspire them to donate for this worthy cause. In many cases, donors quietly offer help as they believe publicizing the act would deprive them of Allah’s blessing.

The doctors are not only serving in the frontline of the fight to confront coronavirus by treating the patients, but also collecting donations at their level to provide things needed by poor patients. In many wards of public hospitals, there is a tradition of generous senior doctors taking the lead to collect funds to do maintenance work at their units, provide medicines to needy patients and even pay them money for expenses. Examples of people going out of the way to offer help to individuals and even institutions are aplenty.

The Abdul Wali Khan University Mardan gifted 26 litres of hand sanitizers to the MMC. Dr Hazi rRahman of the microbiology department at the university prepared the hand sanitizers at his department’s laboratory on the instructions of acting Vice-Chancellor Prof Dr Zahoorul Haq and donated these to the MMC.

The Pakistan Society of Psychiatrists earlier donated 200 sets of Personal Protection Equipment (PPE) to the MMC. The doctors and other staff exposed to infections while treating coronavirus patients need the PPEs to protect themselves.