Is the reason why so many people in Pakistan are disabled… Their diet?

Is it true?

Mr. Shafiq Ur Rehman, the president of Milestone (a Movement for the the Population Welfare Development) says –
“At least 20 million people in Pakistan have disabilities, making that 10 percent of the country’s population,”.

10 percent of the population is huge

My question is, where are all these people going?

Because based on my experience in Karachi. Every single day I see.

One handed beggars.
Stunted men riding special tricycles with a bowls to collect money from pedestrians.
Children with deformed ankles dragging themselves from signal light to signal light.
An enormous amount of beggars characterized with hermaphroditism, a condition where one has both male and female reproductive organisms.
People with dwarfism (A genetic disorder of bone growth, the most common cause of disproportionately short limbs) if not begging at signals, then placed as restaurant doormen.
Blind men standing at the entrances of mosques.

I personally feel that the that the number of disabled on the streets is disproportionately large.

When I was young, I’d put this question to people who I thought to be older and wiser than me and they’d come up with phrases like-

“It’s the mafia, they cut off people’s limbs and put them to work.”

“These people have been born into begging families and they come up with innovative ways to beg”

“They’re just pretending. They’re not actually sick, it’s just – it’s just make up”

The above logic I think, is stupid. We can’t have so many willful beggars on the streets… Let’s explore another angle – their diet

Information from the Pakistan Demographic and Health Survey (2012-2013) shows that only 18 percent of our population is given necessary immediate breastfeeding, and only 38% of infants receive exclusive breastfeeding.

Insecurity of food is widespread, it is prevalent in approximately 40-50% of families in certain provinces, especially in Balochistan, Sindh, South Punjab and parts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Fata.

According to the National Nutrition Survey 2011,
one-third of all children are underweight
Nearly 44 percent are stunted
15pc are wasted, half of them are anemic and almost one-third of these children have iron deficiency anemia.

Taken from https://www.dawn.com/news/129691

We’ll look more into this matter in the coming blogs. What do you think? Think Imran Khan’s talk on malnutrition in children was what our nation needed all along?

Let us know below!

We took much of our data from this link ->
https://gulfnews.com/world/asia/pakistan/pakistans-disabled-population-demand-due-rights-and-jobs-1.2135022
It’d be sick if you read this too 🙂