Press Conference held at the Lahore Press Club
On 10th February, 2010
The Seeds of Education, Policy & Legal Awareness Association (SEPLAA) held a press conference at the Lahore Press Club on the 10th of February, 2010 to officially launch the website of SEPLAA. The Conference also highlighted the first awareness drive of its kind in Pakistan ‘Save a life, save a generation’, seeking to control inter marriages or marriages with cousins which can pose health risks.
Speaking on the occasion, Mrs. Ammara Farooq Malik, the President of SEPLAA remarked, ‘At least 10 per cent of Pakistan's population or one in every ten persons is a thalassemia minor carrier. At this estimated rate, the number of thalassemia cases will be doubled to over 200,000 in the next 10 years.’
Mrs. Farooq further stressed, ‘’ We urge the people of Pakistan to acknowledge the health risks involved with inter- marriages’ adding ‘ The highest numbers of people at risk to transfer a hereditary or contagious disease in Pakistan are people in the NWFP.’
To a question raised by the media, Mrs. Ammara Farooq Malik explained that SEPLAA is a not for profit think tank which is an activist organization in creating awareness. ‘We hope that some day, through our efforts, we will make the concept of premarital blood screening so common in Pakistan that it will be considered a routine matter as it is in all the civilized countries of the world and even in most Muslim states such as Iran, Saudi Arabia and Malaysia.’
Also present on the occasion were Mr. Hassan Awais Wyne, Treasurer of SEPLAA, THE Secretary General Ms. Zahra Wyne and Ms. Saman Jaffer, another Founding Member and Head of Event Management at SEPLAA.
SEPLAA representatives while later talking to the media, expressed their concern that the figures quoted are only estimated numbers as the actual numbers of thalassemia cases and deaths due to hereditary blood disorders (including the unreported cases, the deaths following birth and the cases involving other blood disorders such as enzyme deficiencies) are much higher.
In the end, the President of SEPLAA urged the provincial governments to allocate a separate budget for compulsory blood screening of all men and women at the time of the making of the National Identity cards in order to control the increase in the cases of thalassemia, Hepatitis C and HIV. ‘Not only will this step ensure that everyone will know whether they are carriers of the disease but this information can also prove useful at the time of accidents’.
“We need to educate people in the urban cities first that getting one’s blood screened for thalassemia traits or HIV and Hepatitis C is not a matter of ‘social taboo’ but of ‘social responsibility”, said Mrs. Ammara Farooq. SEPLAA representatives later expressed that they hoped to not only create awareness through the media, publications and educational institutions but intended to train other social workers to be able to counsel prospective marriage couples before they decided to tie the knot.
As a concluding remark the representative added, ‘At SEPLAA, we seek to transform public opinion through research, dialogue, discussions and creating awareness amongst the youth, academia, media and concerned citizens so that one day these principles will become ascendant and replace public opinion which over looks the basic and most fundamental needs of our society.’
