Pakistani boy returns after successful heart surgery in India Lubna J. Naqvi
KARACHI: Six-year-old Muzaffar Ahmed Khan from Loralai, Balochistan, returned to Pakistan on June 3, healthy after undergoing a successful heart surgery in India, thanks to the Rotary Club and Aman ki Asha's Heart to Heart initiative aimed, in the initial phase, at helping 200 underprivileged Pakistani children with heart diseases.

A doctor in Quetta had diagnosed Muzaffar with congenital heart disease in 2007, when he was only three years old. His parents, who could not afford the necessary treatment, had lost all hope that he would ever be able to live a normal, healthy life.

A news item in Jang on October 2, 2010 gave them hope as it carried a report about another Pakistani boy, Mohammad Sufiyan, who had travelled to India and was successfully operated on for a similar heart condition in a Bangalore hospital.

Muzaffar's father Rozan Khan, a private school teacher in Loralai, contacted the Rotary Club in Quetta. Rotary sent the boy's medical reports to Rotary in India. Within a week, on May 5, Muzaffar, accompanied by his father and an uncle, flew to India for the operation. He was admitted to the Rabindranath Tagore International institute of Cardiac Sciences, Kolkatta, on May 7. The two-and-a-half hour operation took place on May 11. Barely a week later, Muzaffar was discharged from hospital on May 19.

Talking to Aman ki Asha in Karachi soon after his return from India, Rozan Khan was all praise for the hospitality and kindness of the Indians. He said that the authorities should ease travel between the two countries so that more people from both countries could meet.

Wednesday, June 08, 2011