Underage marriages, contaminated water termed major issues in Thar

A group of youth under the aegis revive smile youth organization held an awareness session with youth and children of Tharparkar on Sunday to make them aware of the core issues of the desert region and train them to resolve those issues effectively. Before that gathering the group surveyed as to the major issues being confronted by the people of the Thar region that mainly included social and health issues.

Addressing the session in Malani village some 10 kilometers from Mithi, speakers belonging to different areas of Karachi shed light on different ways of employment through modern technology and social media platforms and also engaged the participants in different healthy and creative activities that were new and unique to them.

Head of the team Adnan Surani who is working in the Human Resource Management Department of Aga Khan University said that consumption of unclean water has led to several diseases among Tahri people particularly kidney-related diseases.

“We are surprised to see a large number of diabetic patients in Thar,” he observed and said that Thar had tremendous potential but it required a well-planned strategy for the uplift of people residing there.

Another area of concern they noticed was child marriage and cousin marriage which was a key reason behind multiple health complications among mothers and newborn babies. They said that they had found a large number of people from the 16 to 25 age group affected with thalassemia and propounded that such a high number of Thalassemia patients might be owing to the trend of cousin-marriage in the region.

Ali Hyder Hashmani, a social activist who accompanied the team said that they were in coordination with prominent social organizations in the country for launching health and education-related projects in Thar and Umerkot.

Danish Alwani proposed that Thari Youth should make vlogs on the beauty of Tharparkar and its other features; it would not only promote tourism but also help them explore different sources of employment.

The children present there were engaged in Hand-washing activities. The team distributed gifts among children and vowed to hold mega-level seminars in other areas of Thar as well.