قوم کی کورونا وبا کے خلاف پی پی کی سندھ حکومت کے اقدامات کی تعریف۔

پی پی کے نوجوان چیئرمین بلاول بھٹو کی سربراہی میں سندھ حکومت نے صوبے میں کورونا وائرس کے خلاف جنگ میں ایک زبردست مثال قائم کی ہے۔ حکومت سندھ نے ملک میں کسی بھی قسم کی ہنگامی حالت کے لئے ہیلتھ ٹاسک فورس تشکیل دی ہے جس میں این کوڈ 19 سے متعلق ہے۔

وزیراعلیٰ سندھ سید مراد علی شاہ صوبے میں کورونا وائرس پر قابو پانے کے لئے ضروری اقدامات کی نگرانی اور ہدایت کرنے میں پیش پیش ہیں اور سرگرم ہیں۔ وزیراعلیٰ سندھ نے سمجھداری سے قدم اٹھاتے ہوئے مئی 2020 تک تمام تعلیمی اداروں کو صوبہ بھر میں بند رکھنے کا اعلان کیا تاکہ وبا کے پھیلاؤ کو روکنے کے اقدامات اٹھائے جائیں۔

اپنے حالیہ پریس کانفرنس میں، حکومت سندھ کے ترجمان بیرسٹر مرتضیٰ وھاب نے بتایا کہ ایران کے ساتھ تفتان بارڈر کے راستے کل 853 زائرین ایران سے واپس پاکستان آئے تھے۔ ان زائرین میں سے 288 اسکریننگ کرنے کے بعد سکھر پہنچایا گیا ہے۔ تاہم ، دیگر عازمین کو سرحد پر ہی ٹھہرایا جاتا ہے اور ان کی قرنطین کی مدت پوری کرنے کے بعد ، انہیں بھی صوبے میں داخلے کی اجازت ہوگی۔

حکومت سندھ نے قرنطین مرکز قائم کیا ہے جس کی گنجائش 1024 فلیٹ سے زیادہ ہے۔ اس مرکز میں ایک وقت میں 2148 افراد کو ٹھرائے جانے کی گنجائش ہے۔ اس کے علاوہ حکومت نے کورونا وائرس سے متاثرہ مریضوں کے لئے دو عمارتیں مختص کیں۔

حکومت سندھ نے چانڈکا میڈیکل کالج ، غلام محمد مہر میڈیکل کالج سکھر ، گمبٹ انسٹیٹیوٹ آف میڈیکل سائنسز خیرپور ، اور جیکب آباد انسٹی ٹیوٹ آف میڈیکل سائنس میں کامیابی سے قرنطین سنٹرز قائم کیے ہیں۔ یہ مراکز تمام ضروری سازوسامان اور ادویات سے پوری طرح لیس ہیں۔
https://samachar.pk

#AuratMarch2020 - Behind Pakistani Feminists’ Fight for Rights

By Kaukab Tahir Shairani

International Women’s Day in Pakistan this year was disrupted by religious and moral policing by hardliner Islamic groups. On March 8, Pakistani women took to the streets in the country’s largest-ever women’s day demonstration. Feminists and members of civil society — including both urban and rural populations — boisterously chanted slogans against sexual harassment and domestic violence and called for bodily rights, equal wages, and safer public spaces. 

In Islamabad, clerics from Lal Masjid (Red Mosque), which appears to be the vanguard of radical Islam, disrupted the march. The mosque also contains a seminary for women characterized by its Taliban-style moral policing. The hardliners hurled stones and shoes at the protestors, a show of condemnation of their demands for equality. Across the road, women from Islamist groups executed a military-style demonstration in protest to the slogans. 

Preceding the march, a slogan stating “mera jism, meri marzi” (“my body, my choice”) was the subject of heated debate over its seemingly un-Islamic character. Conservatives on mainstream and social media disregarded the demand as “promiscuous” and launched a smear campaign. One of Pakistan’s leading religious groups, the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (F), initiated an organized effort to forcibly stop a march in Sukkur — a city in southern Pakistan notorious for forced conversions, child marriages, and honor killings. Party stalwart Maulana Fazlur Rehman, during his speech, said that his workers will not tolerate the march and its “vulgar slogans in the name of freedom.”

Here is what this resistance suggests: Pakistani women are fighting not just the country’s patriarchal mindset, but also deep-rooted religious extremism. Over the last few decades and as a result of the Afghan war, politicization and Islamization have remained hand-in-glove. But the roots long pre-date the conflict. 

Back in 1953, a series of threats were made against the Ahmadiyya sect, a community of marginalized Muslims declared apostates by the Pakistani state. The clergy also demanded the removal of Zafrullah Khan, a Pakistani diplomat and jurist, from public office over his association with the sect. Later, under the rule of former military dictator and President Zia-ul-Haq in 1973, the Pakistani Constitution restricted the freedom of religion for the Ahmadiyya. Its followers were then punishable by a prison sentence if they claimed to be Muslims. 

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Former President General Ayub Khan’s era saw the promulgation of the Muslim Family Laws Ordinance 1961, which empowered women especially in areas of divorce and marriage. The new laws discouraged polygyny and required a man to seek consent from his first wife if he wanted to remarry. However, Khan soon retracted those rights and caved to religious orthodoxy in order to extend his control over power. With pressure ramping up from extremists, Jamaat-i-Islami, an Islamist political movement, sought to abolish the country’s family planning program. Signs of deepening intolerance emerged when Khan and Fatima Jinnah, the sister of Pakistan’s founder popularly referred to as the “Mother of the Nation,” stood in conflict over claims that she had diverted from Pakistan’s ideology. The propaganda continued as Islamic hardliners debarred women from holding position as the head of the state, further injecting patriarchy into the political fabric. (The laws were amended in the years after, however, and the country became familiar with a female head of the state when Benazir Bhutto became prime minister in 1988.)

Fast forward to the Soviet-Afghan face-off. Islamabad proved to be Washington’s ally. Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) helped train troops to resist the Soviets. Fanatics, in the process, engineered the glorification of jihad to prepare thousands of mujahideen who participated against the Soviet. 

Come 9/11, Washington and Islamabad joined hands, again. This led to a gradual influx of militants across the porous Afghanistan-Pakistan border and, in turn, may have fueled extremism. Nearly 20 years later, while matters between the United States and the Taliban may be settling, hardline splinter groups continue to impose Islamic morality in Pakistan. Jamia Hafsa, an Islamic university for women located next to the Lal Masjid headquarters, stays concerted in its efforts to keep the spirit of radical Islam alive, making young burka-clad girls and women party to the cause.

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As vigilante groups openly defied the state, the Pakistani government in 2014 launched several military offensives to eliminate proscribed outfits including Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), a group that claimed to be an off-shoot of the Afghan Taliban, and Jaish-e-Muhammad, a banned outfit then known as pioneer of suicide bombings in the region.  

Ethnic and religious polarization has resulted in religious terrorism, sectarian clashes between Shia and Sunni Muslims and attacks on minorities’ places of worship. Nonetheless, the March 8 ruckus appears to be a watershed moment as it challenged the male-dominant political elite and the entrenched religious ideology. Despite the threats lurking, Pakistani women dared to protest. Those who stand in opposition are religious fanatics but also surprisingly come from educated segments of society and include both men and women. The battle for women’s rights will not be won without defeating the hardline religious mindset, too.

US-Taliban deal: How Pakistan's 'Islamist support' finally paid off

Following the US-Taliban deal, Pakistan has re-emerged as a key player in the Afghan peace process. Experts said that Islamabad's alleged policy of backing Taliban factions gives it influence in intra-Afghan talks.

Pakistan's support for the Taliban goes back to the early 1990s when the militant group emerged from the ashes of the long Afghanistan war in the 1980s and the subsequent civil war following the exit of Soviet troops.

Many experts say that Pakistan's military establishment was instrumental in the Taliban's earliest battlefield successes and their eventual capture of Kabul in 1996. Pakistan was also one of the few countries in the world that swiftly recognized the Taliban's hardline regime in Afghanistan.

Experts say that there are several strategic reasons behind Islamabad's support for the Islamist group. Prior to the Taliban's emergence from the Islamic seminaries in northwestern Pakistan, and the Pashtun-speaking areas of Afghanistan, Islamabad had supported several groups to protect its interests in Kabul.

But other regional countries, including Russia and India, were also vying for control in Afghanistan. This regional tug-of-war over Afghanistan resulted in a deadly civil war that killed thousands of people.

Since the partition of British-India in 1947, Pakistan has always been wary of "unfriendly" regimes in Kabul. It started backing Islamist groups in Afghanistan against pro-communist parties and pro-India politicians, which culminated in a full-blown "jihad" in the 1980s with support from the United States.

Following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, Pakistan was forced to put the brakes on supporting Islamist militants in Afghanistan.Under pressure from Washington, then Pakistani military dictator Pervez Musharraf joined the US-led war on terror against Al-Qaida and the Taliban, and backed the US invasion of Afghanistan to topple the Taliban regime.

Doha deal 'victory' for Pakistan

From the 2001 US invasion of Afghanistan to the recent signing of the US-Taliban agreement in Doha, western governments have blamed Islamabad for its alleged support to some factions of the Taliban and other Islamist groups.

The US urged Pakistan to "do more" against the Taliban to stop militant attacks on foreign troops stationed in Afghanistan. Security analysts say Pakistan acted "selectively" against the Taliban, knowing that the group could be used as a "bargaining chip" at a later stage in the Afghan war.

Experts say that the landmark Doha deal  is a huge victory for Islamabad, as the Taliban, the militant group that Pakistan has always favored, is once again back in the driving seat.

"With Pakistan's support, the Taliban are stronger than ever — economically, militarily, politically, and also in their international standing. Pakistan obviously hopes that it can benefit from the remarkable re-emergence of the Taliban in Afghanistan," Siegfried O. Wolf, director of research at the Brussels-based South Asia Democratic Forum (SADF), told DW.

What is Pakistan's influence moving forward?

It is not surprising that Pakistan hailed the historic deal between the US and the Taliban in Doha on Saturday.

"The Pakistani military establishment assured Washington that they used their influence to make sure that the Pakistani Taliban would force the Afghan Taliban to agree to stop attacks on American forces in Afghanistan," said Ali K. Chishti, a Pakistani security analyst who is familiar with Islamabad's role in the peace process, told DW, adding that US President Donald Trump used his good ties with Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan to get the job done.

Coronavirus threatens Afghanistan, Pakistan

By DAVID STOUT

With porous borders, creaking hospitals and large illiterate populations, Afghanistan and Pakistan face a potentially devastating health crisis after the new coronavirus erupted in neighboring Iran.
Islamabad has closed official border crossings while Kabul has suspended all travel to the Islamic republic, which has reported 19 deaths and a total of 139 infections – making it one of the hardest hit countries outside the virus epicenter China.

But experts fear the measures could prove ineffective with thousands of people – refugees fleeing violence, Shiite pilgrims, smugglers and migrants looking for work – likely crossing the long, poorly patrolled frontiers every day.  

The virus has spread to more than 30 countries, killing over 2,700 and infecting 80,000, mostly in China. But new outbreaks in Europe, the Middle East and in Asia have fanned fears of the contagion taking hold in poor nations which lack the healthcare infrastructure to cope.

Pakistan announced Wednesday its first two cases of the virus. Officials said one of the infected individuals was a 22-year-old Karachi male who had acquired the virus in Iran. While they did not confirm where the second case was reported, local media placed it in Islamabad.

Afghanistan meanwhile announced Monday its first virus infection involving a patient who had recently been in Iran where millions of Afghans live.

Afghan television and radio broadcasts have begun advising people on how to prevent transmission of the virus, while residents have rushed to buy face masks – straining supplies and sparking a tenfold increase in the cost of a single mask at some pharmacies in the capital Kabul.

“We are worried, we don’t have a proper functioning health system and the borders are open. All we can do is take some preventive measures and pray to God to help us,” said Ihsanul Haq, a government employee.

Afghanistan’s healthcare system is in tatters after more than four decades of war, with the few available hospitals focused mainly on basic care and trauma. They lack the expertise to deal with infectious diseases.  

“It could be a disaster if the virus really spreads all over the country. There aren’t that many health centers,” said Wali, a Kabul-based physician, who specializes in viral infectious diseases. 

“The government is doing what they can to contain the spread of the virus. But it is very difficult.”

Adding to the challenge of limiting the spread of the virus is the Afghan tradition of greeting family and friends with handshakes, hugs and kisses.

A largely illiterate population also makes it difficult to educate people about ways to stop the transmission. 

“People are illiterate, you can’t get the message through to them,” Wali said.

‘Unprepared’

Across the border in Pakistan there are growing fears over how the country would deal with a potential outbreak.  

Islamabad has a history of failing to contain infectious diseases such as polio, tuberculosis and hepatitis.

Adding to the challenge, hundreds of thousands of quack doctors are thought to be working across the country and scandals involving the use of dirty needles in healthcare settings have eroded public trust in the system.

Some Pakistani students trapped in the Chinese city of Wuhan – where the virus was first detected in December – told AFP recently they were nervous about returning to their country if authorities were to evacuate them.

“We are worried about how the authorities are going to treat us when we go back to Pakistan – some students who went back told us the officials treated them very badly,” Ruqia Shaikh said.

While Pakistan has closed land borders with Iran, it has maintained air travel to and from China – increasingly a source of trade and commerce for the country. 

“There is a limited concept of prevention, unfortunately. I fear it’s not well prepared at all for any health emergency,” Pakistani public health expert Arshad Altaf said.

Pakistan this week moved quickly to quarantine at least 270 people near the Iranian border after a group of pilgrims returned and briefly mixed with other residents. 

That came hours after Pakistan sealed off its frontier with Iran in southwestern Balochistan province, which remains vulnerable to a public health emergency. 

Decades of fighting a separatist insurgency and militant violence, along with neglect from the central government, have left the impoverished area with little infrastructure.

Ziaullah Langove, Balochistan’s home minister, said there were nearly 10,000 Pakistanis still in Iran, mostly students and pilgrims that Iranian officials were planning to send back in small groups. 

At the Taftan border crossing long queues of trucks waited in hope of being allowed into Iran, as residents and officials donned surgical masks.

“There is no information sharing whatsoever,” said resident Khuda Baksh, chiding officials for failing to keep locals informed about the situation.  

“There is fear and panic among the public, our business and lives are at risk.”

https://asiatimes.com/2020/02/coronairus-threatens-afghanistan-pakistan/

Is coronavirus a biological weapon?

Dr. Rafi Amir-Ud-Din

As there is no known remedy for coronavirus, the focus needs to be on following the best practices.

Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is an outbreak of respiratory illness caused by a novel (new) coronavirus. It is now an officially declared global pandemic. According to the latest reports, there are 125,048 confirmed cases of COVID-19.

By Thursday, 4,613 deaths had been reported. Only in the preceding 24 hours, 321 deaths had been reported. China has borne the brunt of the COVID-19. China has 80,981 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 3173 deaths. Outside of China, 44,067 cases had been confirmed, and 1,440 deaths reported.

Pakistan’s tally of the virus had reached 21, which included a secondary contact case. The secondary contact case means that the victim had no travel history, and he must have contracted the virus from one of the people who travelled to Pakistan from another country. Officially, COVID-19 has spread to 117 countries/territories/ areas of the world.

COVID-19 cuts through income barriers and has hit the unlikeliest of places and individuals. The wife of Canada’s prime minister has tested positive for the virus. The Italian chief of army staff has tested positive. An adviser to Iran’s Supreme Leader has died of COVID-19. Among other notables, Tom Hanks and his wife, Rita Wilson, have tested positive for the virus. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has given a stark warning that up to 70 percent of the country’s population could contract the coronavirus. Stock markets around the world have since seen an unprecedented meltdown.

A lot of explanations have been advanced regarding the source of the coronavirus. Understandably, public-health officials want to pin down the virus’s source so that they can prevent new outbreaks. A lot of conspiracy theories are also making the rounds. The question essentially boils down to one point: was COVID-19 developed in a laboratory, and is it being used as a biological weapon to contain the formidable Chinese economic hegemony?

A related question is whether the virus was made in the laboratory purposefully, or did the virus made in the laboratory accidentally escape the laboratory. The lab-escape theory is so far the more widely accepted conspiracy theory. It had been circulating on social media for weeks, and gained considerable visibility following a New York Post article in late February.

Steven Mosher, a social scientist, summarises why he believes COVID-19 may have been accidentally spread by China’s National Biosafety Laboratory at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where researchers have studied bat coronaviruses. Mosher says that the lab is less than 10 miles away from the seafood market where a clustre of COVID-19 cases was first discovered.

Mosher believes that the said lab is located in the Institute of Virology in Wuhan, where the dangerous pathogens were purportedly kept and looked at as potential bioweapons. There were reports that in the 2003 SARS outbreak, the SARS-CoV virus escaped from virology labs in China. He says Chinese virologist and bioweapons expert Major General Chen Wei’s visit to the Wuhan Institute of Virology with military scientists in January was an exercise in damage control.

In the past, these viruses have spread through wild bats that infect another type of animal —an intermediate host — that then spreads it to humans. SARS-CoV, for example, was transmitted from bats to civets to humans, while camels were an intermediate host in MERS, according to Quanta.

But there is a lot of scholarly evidence to suggest that coronavirus was not manufactured in the laboratory. Even if the exact source of the disease is not known yet, the virus originally came from wildlife.

An analysis of SARS-CoV-2 by scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology suggests that the virus’s genome is 96 percent similar to a coronavirus found in bats. Transmission from an animal, with no lab experiment or genetic manipulation involved, fits best with what scientists know about how other coronaviruses have made the jump to humans.In the past, these viruses have spread through wild bats that infect another type of animal—an intermediate host—that then spreads it to humans. SARS-CoV, for example, was transmitted from bats to civets to humans, while camels were an intermediate host in MERS, according to Quanta.The civet version of SARS-CoV was 99.8 percent similar to the one found in humans—much more closely related than the bat and human varieties of SARS-CoV-2—so researchers believe the new coronavirus also infected another type of animal on its way from bats to humans. But they have not found a candidate so far, according to Nature.

However, some other scientists have narrowed down their focus on the potential suspect from which humans may have contracted the virus. One explanation is that virus may have originated with horseshoe bats in China and then spread to other animals, possibly, ant-eating pangolin which was subsequently eaten by people. The ability of the virus to move across animal hosts is a characteristic feature of coronaviruses, according to Paul McCray.

It is the genetic similarities between the coronavirus found in humans and that found in the pangolins, which make scientists suspect that humans may have got the virus from the pangolins. The researchers said they had found a coronavirus in smuggled pangolins that was a 99 percent genetic match to the virus circulating in people.

Does it mean that bat-pangolin-human is the authentic link? Unfortunately, this is not the case. Scientists claim that although the animal is still a contender, the mystery is far from solved. Dozens of people infected early in the current outbreak worked in a live-animal market in the Chinese city of Wuhan. Still, tests of coronavirus samples found at the market have yet to identify a source.

In addition to the claim that a naturally evolved virus escaped from a lab by mistake, some conspiracy theories have posited that coronavirus was genetically engineered. Researchers throughout the world, including in the US and China, have conducted research involving the creation of experimentally engineered hybrid coronaviruses.

But there is no evidence that coronavirus was genetically engineered, as claimed in a study on the genomic analysis of the new virus. Even if the new coronavirus does have some genetic differences to other known viruses due to mutations, there’s no evidence that this is the result of a human experiment. It is claimed that if the virus were engineered, scientists would expect to see additional genetic material in its genome, which actually is not the case. So, the difference between coronavirus and other known viruses may just be a coincidence, rather than the result of human activity.

In a nutshell, the odds are heavily in favor of the theory that coronavirus jumped from the animals to humans. The most compelling reason to believe that coronavirus is not human-made is that the recent coronavirus closely resembles two other viruses that triggered outbreaks in recent decades, SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV. All three viruses seem to have originated in bats.

In short, the characteristics of new coronavirus fall in line with the current understanding that coronaviruses make the jump from animals to people. As there is no known remedy for coronavirus, the focus needs to be on following the best practices.

https://www.thenews.com.pk/tns/detail/629091-is-coronavirus-a-biological-weapon