Please help this child [Archives:2005/860/Health]

By Abdulwahab A. Al-Sofi
For Yemen Times
Life without trouble is an impossible dream but there is nothing like cooperation for making people happy. Life is full of tragedy, disappointments, and frustration. It is the age-ill due to a damnable germ called poverty. Concealed pains which twists in our chests, spread and increase year by year in Yemen, is poverty and starvation… It destroys our conservative society. Moral deterioration is mainly caused by them. Our good values started hiding itself in our society as we began to further ourselves from Islamic concepts. Rich people should support and help poor people as our Islamic religion orders. The practical and best way of cooperation in Islam are the Alms. On the other hand, Merchants use their tricks to double their wealth. Our government disables to get a salvation for people. We live among an unmerciful society and a perverted government that rules us. The majority of people in Yemen only think about food for today and tomorrow. Nothing else, but to be able to provide for their children's daily need. Vacancies are hardly found. In case people are lucky getting jobs, salaries do not cope with the presently hard livelihood. Many people work at jobs they do not like, even hate, because of the money they get from it. These people have pressing commitments to be met such as supporting, a large family and caring for their children .What I have said, without a shadow of a doubt, is not only painful but gets worse in the following case: My body shudders at the sight of a poor family, who lives in a house that consist of a room, kitchen, and a bathroom. The family consists of a parent; grandmother and four children. They are too poor to save for tomorrow's food. Moreover, they are inflected with a disabled baby called Abdullah, three years old, who can neither walk nor crawl. His eyes reflect pity and his face bears the stamps of suffering. He has been twisting of pain since birth. More so, he cannot sleep due to a horrible pain in his mind. He cries all day and night, with his mother staying up with him. I was deeply affected by his status. He enjoys neither his childhood nor his future. Some doctors diagnosed his case as oxygen shortage during birth. At that time, it is said that he wasn't born naturally and was kept in the hospital for a month. Some doctors advised to get medical care and continuous medicine that would cost up to three thousand YR daily. His father is very poor and cannot afford it because he only works as a laborer as a cargo's porter. He sometimes cannot even afford his children's meals. I have nothing to say but to invoke to Allah to recover this child and to endure his parents. Even though they welcomed me into their house, they were disappointment that I couldn't do anything. They are so anxious about their son that they are about to lose their minds. They do not know what to do with him except to depend on Allah Almighty and the help of people. We should feel the prick of conscience and its torture, come back to ourselves, and side with poor people, with our sick children.

Doesn't this boy deserve to get medical care just like any other boy?

Isn't it his right to receive help from the government, as we are a Moslem society? What is he guilty of? As we love our children to be healthy, we should also care for others. Does the government do something for those poor people? If not, where is the Human Rights Organization? Is this child not a human being? It is unfair for the government to treat us like this. Such treatment would make anyone rebel. Please have a mercy. Mercy is an attribute of ALLAH. If there is no desire to help poor people, help for the sake of Allah for protecting your children at least.
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