by Lawrence Faulkner

Badin is a semi-rural city of approximately 150,000 inhabitants, 200 km from Karachi. It takes little less than 3 hours, for Tahir and I to get there by car, the driver is fast and confident, we call him Mr. Hamilton. Some say Pakistan is a dangerous place, I think they refer to the driving. It's the first time I travel inland in Pakistan, everything is very interesting.

We spend a very pleasant evening at the Army Welfare Sugar Mills with the amusing and relaxing company of Col. Hyder and other officers who made a very professional barbecue. The following morning we visit the Thalassemia Care Centre of Badin, discuss our project with Dr. Haroon Manon, the centre coordinator, as well as with Mr. Agha Wasif Abbass, the District Coordination Officer (DCO). We meet almost twenty families and I am very impressed how well this children are cared for. Dr. Manon and his collaborators are doing a great job on education, screening and prevention of thalassemia. They are following 300 patients coming from the whole district which has a total population of 1.4 million, more than 7,000 screening tests (haemoglobin electrophoresis) have been performed on relatives of affected children as well as almost 100 workshops and meetings educating on thalassemia and its prevention.

We make a preliminary plan on how to move foreward, we all agree that there will be major emphasis on social background of families and on communication in order to offer pre-transplant evaluation to the most appropriate candidates.

I admire Haroon and his team for what they are doing and am very grateful to Mr. Abbass, Badin's DCO, for all the support he is provding to children with thalassemia and for having given me the oportunity to visit Badin and meet all these dedicated people. I hope we will be able to have a long and fruitful collaboration.