Season for Giving

Boston Globe, December 11, 2005
Out in the cold
By G Naheed Usmani

AS 2005 comes to a close, humanity has been reduced to a ragged, worn, and defeated lot. Death and suffering have become commonplace.

The year started with the tsunami, turning many New Year celebrations into fund-raisers as we tried to take care of this global tragedy that killed 200,000 and displaced one million people. Images from the destroyed regions flooded our homes.

Then, Katrina. In the minute-to-minute videos we saw the cries for help and anguish of people stranded in Louisiana, waving at the passing helicopters. We opened our homes and wallets to help in any way possible.

On Oct. 8, a 6 a.m. call from my brother informed me of the devastating earthquake, with the epicenter just 80 miles from my birthplace in Pakistan. As time has passed, this tragedy has continued to unfold. The official count of people killed has escalated to 86,000, and of people left homeless to 3.3 million. Rescue teams are still making first contact with stranded inhabitants of remote valleys.

As a pediatrician and oncologist, I fight the battle of life and death on a daily basis, but this tragedy affecting a whole generation of children has become a living nightmare. They were in their schools when the earthquake hit; 40,000 children may have been buried alive under the rubble! Another million children are at risk of dying from exposure, starvation, and disease. Countless are now orphans.

Physician friends who went to help have written harrowing accounts. One wrote: ''I have just come back from Muzaffarabad. It is the vision of Apocalypse. Mountains have been split almost in halves and 80 percent of buildings have been destroyed in this city of 200,000 people. CMH hospital collapsed and most doctors, nurses, and patients were buried alive. The stench of dead bodies is so bad that one can not walk on any city road without a nasal mask. People are bringing their injured . . . with maggots in their compound fractures."

Another account: ''I helped set up the field hospital. The major abdominal/thoracic injured were already dead. What we saw were heavily infected wounds, open fractures. I lost count of guillotine amputations that were done. Florid tetanus, meningitis, sepsis, pelvic fractures, numerous paraplegics and quadriplegics, people with jelly for spines, brain exuding from open skull fractures, ruptured bladders. We were busy from 0600 to midnight."

Parents had to abandon family members to certain death when they could carry only some of the injured down tortuous mountain trails to field hospitals. Many survivors amputated their own arms or legs with crude knives and saws to free themselves from collapsed buildings. Hundreds of women are paraplegics with broken spines because they instinctively bent down to protect themselves when roofs fell.

The disaster galvanized Pakistanis and South Asians worldwide. Volunteers poured in from around the country and the world to help. Here in New England, Pakistani and Indian physicians joined hands in fund-raising. Our wonderful patients and hospital colleagues opened their wallets and purses. There were drives for blankets, tents, medicines. Doctors from New England hospitals went to work in the disaster area. But our efforts are a mere drop in the bucket as winter arrives bringing still more hardship and death.

I have been deeply touched by the generosity of so many but am also left feeling that my fellow Americans do not yet comprehend the extent of this tragedy. American private donations for earthquake victims have totaled $13.1 million vs. $1.3 billion for tsunami victims, a 100 times difference for two not dissimilar disasters.

I find it hard to believe that we have exhausted our willingness to give. Could the media coverage of the disaster have a role in shaping our responses? Television and newspapers which kindled our humanity by letting us share the experiences of Katrina, and tsunami victims have focused on the political in their earthquake coverage. Earthquake stories have regularly included pictures of Osama bin Laden, who might be hiding somewhere in the vast mountainous region which stretches across Pakistan, Afghanistan, and India. Earthquake victims have somehow been tainted with this inappropriate and tangential association.

Thousands of orphaned children, paraplegic mothers, and poor farmers who are all desperately trying to survive the harsh Himalayan winter without shelter, warm clothing, and adequate sustenance are humanitarian, not political concerns. We rendered help in tsunami-affected areas without focusing on religious beliefs or the terrorist Bali bombings. We must not be robbed of our humanity by inserting politics here.

I wish the media would accord us a level of intimacy with these earthquake victims as it did with Katrina and tsunami victims. The world needs to witness their stories, so lives can be salvaged and homes rebuilt. If politics must enter the equation, it should only be about winning hearts and minds and putting America's generous, compassionate, caring side on display for the world. This is the season for giving. Let us all make a present of a holiday meal or a new life to an earthquake or Katrina survivor.

Dr. G Naheed Usmani is president of the Association of Pakistani Physicians of New England and associate professor at UMass Medical School.