Saman Afeef’s two-year-old son, Muhammad, suffers from a severe blood disorder that leads him to bleed without any injury, and he requires a complex surgery. But Saman is worried about travelling alone from Karachi in Pakistan to Delhi for the operation without her husband, who has not got a visa.
“It would be a gesture of great goodwill if the Indian government can give both me and my husband a visa to travel with our son to Delhi for this sensitive surgery. We tried many doctors who said no to this surgery till a doctor in Delhi agreed he would do it to save my child’s life. My son and I got visas but my husband did not get one. We are still trying,” Saman told News18 over the phone from Karachi.
Aching hearts
Several Pakistani families reached out to this correspondent over the last few days saying India had lately adopted a policy to give only one parent, and not both, a medical visa as an attendant along with a patient. The visa relations between India and Pakistan have plummeted over the last few years but medical visas are still given by India as many Pakistanis do make their way here for complex surgeries.
Last month, five-year-old Pakistani child Zahra returned from Delhi within a couple of days of landing here as her pregnant mother accompanying her panicked and chose to go back to Pakistan without getting the surgery done. Her husband had also not got a medical visa from India. Dr Rajesh Sharma at Apollo Hospital in Delhi said the child was operated on twice before elsewhere “for tetralogy of fallot with single pulmonary artery” but without success and needed a high-risk surgery.
“In everything we do, we should put ourselves in their place and think how we would like to be treated. At least we Indians have always been taught that. What that country does to us, we cannot be taking it out on their sick children and their families,” Dr Sharma told News18. He is a paediatric cardiac specialist and has treated many Pakistani children.
More cases
A businessman dealing in silver jewellery in Karachi, Atiq Ur Rehman, is also trying for medical visas for himself, his wife Benish Atiq, and nine-year-old son Hassan to come to Delhi since April. The child has a hole in his heart and requires open-heart surgery in Delhi. “None of us have got a visa yet. We were told that one of us, either me or my wife, can get a visa, so I opted that I be given one. But the visas have still not come. We request India to please speed up the visa process and grant all three of us the visas,” Rehman told News18.
A source in the Indian establishment, meanwhile, said visas for Pakistanis need security vetting from the home ministry and the agencies and hence take time. “There are security considerations,” a source said, citing a “case-to-case basis”.
Saman Afeef, the mother of Mohammad, however, says time is of the essence for her son’s surgery. “The visas took 2.5 months to come for me and my child, while my husband Afeef Ahmed did not get it and we are trying again. My visa now expires in August,” she said. In her recent letter to the Indian High Commission in Islamabad, Saman wrote: “I request you to save my son’s life and allow my husband to travel with me. I have attached pictures of my son’s worst blood disorder so that you can understand the severity of the case.”
“His health is worsening day by day. I cannot travel alone with such a complex medical condition of my son and desperately need an attendant for the whole process as my son is too young and can’t even walk. I hope India will understand the situation of a mother,” Saman told News18. The child suffers from “severe Haemophilia B with tetralogy of fallot” and doctors in Karachi, as well as Delhi, recommended in letters that both the parents accompany the child to Delhi.
In the case of nine-year-old Hassan too, the Aga Khan University Hospital in Karachi gave a letter that the child has a complex congenital heart disease and did undergo a procedure in Lahore when he was three months old but requires a “complex VSD closure” procedure for which he has been referred to Apollo Hospital, Delhi. “Given the severity of his stenosis, he needs to go to India relatively urgently. I will appreciate it if his visa along with his parents’ gets approved urgently,” the letter said.
Hassan’s father, Atiq ur Rehman, appealed to the Indian High Commission in a letter on April 11 to grant both parents and the child a visa. “We can’t live to see him in pain so please grant a visa for the three of us as my wife is not too confident to face such issues but her presence is required near my son,” he wrote.
These Pakistani families now await a positive response from India to their appeals.
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