"Friends" aid flood relief in Pakistan

Quakers have supported the Abaseen Foundation from its early days, with funds and other aid. In 2002 Mukhtair spoke at a Glenthorne Quaker Centre conference, extending the network of support and awareness among Friends. In response to Abaseen’s flood disaster appeal, Meetings and individual Friends from all over Britain and beyond have donated an estimated £30,000 in the last two weeks. Abaseen Foundation UK trustee Helen Bingley says: ‘Quakers helped to set up and sustain Nahaqi and they are now providing essential funds for relief work – I think they should know that it is down to their faith in us for the last ten years that we can now help so many people.’

Lancaster Quakers remember the day, a decade ago, when Mukhtair Zaman came to Meeting for Worship – his warm presence, his ready smile and the twinkle in his eye. He said he felt called to step out from his career as pulmonologist at Blackpool Victoria hospital, to return to his native Peshawar to improve the lives of thousands of Afghan and Pakistani people in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan.

A net was cast out and supporters of Mukhtair’s vision were drawn in. Mukhtair founded the Abaseen Foundation Pakistan, and in 2001 took over responsibility for Nahaqi Hospital on the edge of Peshawar. The following year, Abaseen Foundation UK was formed by people in the north-west of England to support the growth of a dynamic community hospital service at Nahaqi.

When Abaseen took over, the 22-bed hospital was in such a derelict state that virtually the only healthcare offered to its catchment of 200,000 people (including 60,000 Afghan refugees) was tooth extractions, and advice, if a doctor was available. It had no water supply, no telephone, and intermittent supply of electricity.

Today, through partnership between the provincial government and the Abaseen Foundations of UK and Pakistan, the hospital provides healthcare that makes a real difference to local people, with 70,000 patients per year, compared with 13,000 before the foundation took over. Additional services and staff have been added, and the government has agreed to increase the bed numbers to fifty.
With Mukhtair as chief executive, the foundation has extended to education, medical research, and humanitarian relief. In 2005, Abaseen responded to the Pakistan earthquake emergency. And today, Abaseen is providing direct and effective relief to victims of the flood disaster. Some key elements of this response are:

• Supporting three defined communities in Swat, Kohat and Charsadda (around Nahaqi), moving them from rescue to rehabilitation.
• Working in partnership with the UN and UNICEF.
• Embarking at the request of the UN on a rescue mission to Kohistan to provide emergency medical treatment and aid to 10,000 people who are cut off from the outside world.

Quakers have supported the foundation from its early days, with funds and other aid. In 2002 Mukhtair spoke at a Glenthorne Quaker Centre conference, extending the network of support and awareness among Friends. In response to Abaseen’s flood disaster appeal, Meetings and individual Friends from all over Britain and beyond have donated an estimated £30,000 in the last two weeks. Abaseen Foundation UK trustee Helen Bingley says: ‘Quakers helped to set up and sustain Nahaqi and they are now providing essential funds for relief work – I think they should know that it is down to their faith in us for the last ten years that we can now help so many people.’