The practices of these Muslims are considered crimes in Pakistan, according to the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community USA, and Qamar’s death came after leaflets declared that treatment at the Tahir Heart Institute was forbidden by Islamic law.
Source/Credit: The Columbus Dispatch
By JoAnne Viviano | May 28, 2014
The colleague of a Fairfield County cardiologist gunned down during a humanitarian trip to Pakistan said the death will not deter others from making similar trips to help the poor.
Dr. Anwar Din of Pickerington was mourning yesterday after losing his friend and neighbor, Dr. Mehdi Ali Qamar, who was killed on Monday in Pakistan after visiting the graves of relatives at a cemetery.
Qamar had arrived in his native country a couple of days earlier to volunteer at the Tahir Heart Institute in Rabwah, founded by members of the Ahmadi sect of Islam to provide free medical care to those in need.
“People who are going to do good cannot be stopped,” said Din, a founding member of the institute who worked there from 2007 to 2010.
“You cannot stop in the face of evil,” he said. “You overcome it by doing more good.”
Advocates suspect Qamar was killed because he was part of the Ahmadi sect, which, unlike other Muslim groups, believes that a promised messiah has already come.
The practices of these Muslims are considered crimes in Pakistan, according to the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community USA, and Qamar’s death came after leaflets declared that treatment at the Tahir Heart Institute was forbidden by Islamic law.
Qamar, who worked at Fairfield Medical Center in Lancaster, in Fairfield County, was optimistic as he prepared to leave with a suitcase packed with 80 stents to be used in cardiac procedures, Din said.
“That’s 80 lives that will be changed forever,” Qamar told his colleague.
It’s that sentiment that compels health-care workers to offer their help in countries that might not be as stable as the U.S. In a report issued last month, the International Committee of the Red Cross listed 1,809 incidents of violence or threats of violence against health-care personnel, patients, health-care facilities and medical transports in 23 countries in 2012 and 2013.
People who share their talents in foreign lands have a passion for it, said Linda Highfield of Powell, in Delaware County. She is international chairwoman of the Nursing Council at Operation Smile, which provides free pediatric surgeries to repair facial deformities.
Highfield, who has been to about 40 different countries, said workers travel in groups, rarely leave the hospitals where they work and are careful to take safety precautions.
When countries are in upheaval, missions are canceled, she said. Still, foreign workers can be targeted by criminals, and it’s unsettling to work in areas that have armed guards.
The tears and gratitude of children and parents make the risks worth it, said Highfield, who works as a nurse at the OhioHealth Riverside Outpatient Surgery Center.
“If 9/11 didn’t stop us, nothing will,” she said.
Dr. Terry Davis of Upper Arlington, associate chief medical officer and co-medical director for patient safety at Nationwide Children’s Hospital, has made trips to Kenya, El Salvador and Peru, providing training and supplies to establish self-sustaining medical programs.
Aid workers might think twice when they hear about the attack on a fellow humanitarian worker, he said.
“Those of us in it for the long haul, we shake our heads when we hear that, and we worry ... but it certainly doesn’t put me off,” Davis said.
“Pretty much every place you go in the world there’s instability, and if you let it get in the way of doing the stuff you really want to do and going to the paces you really want to go to, you’d just sit around.”
Davis said he doesn’t ignore danger, and he has canceled trips or taken precautions as needed. For example, he said, when doctors in Peru performed surgery on the son of a known terrorist, they scheduled his procedure as the final one on the trip, so they could leave quickly if the outcome was negative. (The boy did fine.)
Din, who works with the Genesis Health Care System in Zanesville, said it was no secret that Qamar’s work was dangerous. The main thoroughfare leading to the hospital is lined with sand bags, visitors enter through a metal detector and are greeted by a guard armed with a machine gun, and cars are not permitted to take patients to the door, he said.
Din said the death has him reeling. He doesn’t know when he will return to the Heart Institute but expects he will.
“It’s just something in your blood,” he said. “It’s helping the poor who have no other access except what we can provide them.”
jviviano@dispatch.com
@JoAnneViviano
http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2014/05/28/violence-wont-stop-volunteers.html
Read original post here: Doctor’s killing in Pakistan won’t stop other medical volunteers
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