She had lost too much blood. Four bullets had ripped through her. A surgery was under way and they could not use anaesthesia.
Salma Jaffar, the sole survivor of an attack on a polio immunisation team in Qayyumabad, vividly remembers the searing pain as the doctors cut and sewed her up.
For 22 days she stayed in the intensive care unit wondering who would pay her medical expenses. The health department owes her two months’ salary and the meagre stipend for vaccination, Rs250 a day, has also not been paid since August.
Aid for her came from the Muttahida Qaumi Movement, which shifted her to the privately run Nazeer Hussain Hospital, where she underwent a second surgery and still goes there for a daily physiotherapy session.
Two months have passed since the attack, which took the lives of three polio vaccinators: Akbari, Anita and Fahad. But sometimes Salma still screams herself hoarse in her sleep. “It’s raining bullets again!”
Employed in the health department for 14 years, she never wanted to be engaged in the anti-polio campaign. “No one wants to in the current situation. We are forced to. They tell us they will not pay us our salaries if we don’t cooperate,” she said, sitting at her modest house on Jahangir Road, Teen Hatti. “I survived because they thought I was dead.”
The full article continues at http://www.thenews.com.pk/Todays-News-4-238631-Paid-only-in-bullets-for-saving-the-fut on The News’s website.