The Hindu : Noor better; funds, goodwill pour in

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Jul 17, 2003

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Noor better; funds, goodwill pour in

By Divya Sreedharan

A video grab shows Tayyaba Nadeem kissing her daughter, Noor Fatima, as her husband, Nadeem Sajjad, looks on at the Narayana Hrudayalaya hospital in Bangalore on Wednesday.

BANGALORE July 16. The story of Noor Fatima, the little girl from Pakistan, has opened many hearts and purses in India and Pakistan, resulting in the creation of a fund to take care of poor children suffering from heart ailments.

The fund will be set up at the Narayana Hrudayalaya hospital here, where the child from Pakistan underwent an open-heart surgery on Tuesday. She had arrived with her parents by the resumed Lahore-Delhi bus service last week.

On Wednesday, at a function organised by the Rotary Club here, Noor's father, Nadeem Sajjad, said he had deposited Rs. 1.4 lakhs with Devi Shetty, chairman and managing director of the hospital for "poor Indian children". Dr. Shetty said the money was the amount deposited by Noor's parents for the surgery. Now that the hospital had waived the expenses, the amount would go to the fund.

Besides, another Rs. 1.4 lakhs given by an anonymous donor will also go to the fund. Noor's father gave an additional Rs. 50,000 for the treatment of poor Pakistani children who come to the hospital for surgery. This includes the Rs. 10,000 given to the parents from the Karnataka Chief Minister's Relief Fund on Tuesday. Today, a Rotarian promised to donate Rs. 50,000.

``Many people have offered (money). It is difficult to tell you just how much money will go to the fund at this moment,'' Dr. Shetty said.

The Karnataka Governor, T.N. Chaturvedi, gave Rs. 10,000 to Noor's parents on Wednesday through his personal secretary. Asked if that money would also go to the fund, Dr. Shetty said: "I do not know. It is up to the parents."

Called "Dosti Fund", it is named after the Lahore-Delhi bus (`Dosti' bus) in which Noor and her parents came. It will be operated through the Rotary Bangalore Health City, which opened a branch at the hospital last month. Noor, true to her name, had spread light all around, club members said.

Mr. Nadeem wanted India and Pakistan to issue visas on priority for sick children. "If poor, they must also get financial aid,'' he said. His wife, Tayyaba, said she had left home "with fear in my heart, not knowing what would happen''. But the love showered on them was overwhelming.

Rajesh Sharma, paediatric cardiac surgeon, who led the team that operated on Noor, said the child would be on ventilator in the Intensive Therapy Unit for another day or so, but was recovering well.

Later, Santhanam, a former industrialist gave Rs. 12 lakhs to set up a Cardiac Diseases Research Laboratory at the hospital to be named after his late wife, Vishalakshi. He said he had lived in Lahore and Rawalpindi — Noor's parents are from Lahore — before Partition.

Dr. Shetty, who was also part of the surgical team, said they had so far operated on over 4,000 children with complex heart conditions from Bangladesh. One out of every 140 children was born with heart defects, he said. As the largest number of children were born in Asia, the continent most children with heart defects. "The language of pain, like the language of smile, should have no boundaries," he said.

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