Pakistan on Tuesday formally sought India’s assistance in procuring dengue medicines from across the border at the earliest to help deal with the growing incidence of the fever across the country particularly in Punjab where seven people have died of the virus in the past month.
Since the weekend, the local media has been reporting that Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif had instructed his officials to procure World Health Organisation-approved medicines from India at the earliest. The formal request was received by the Indian High Commission in Islamabad on Tuesday.
Essentially, the request is to allow a team to visit India to purchase the medicines and the High Commission has agreed to facilitate the process, particularly fast-tracking visas which normally take at least a month to materialise. The other option for procuring these medicines was France but that would have been too time-consuming.
Punjab is the most affected province with as many as 3,800 cases in Lahore alone and 4,000 more such instances across the most populated province of the country. While Punjab is struggling to deal with dengue, Sindh is once again in the grip of floods; rendering multitudes destitute.
In a marked departure from last year during the devastating floods that inundated a third of the country, India was invited this time to a briefing organised by the Foreign Office on Monday to apprise the diplomatic community about the damage caused by the floods in Sindh. Last year, the Indian High Commissioner was not invited to a similar briefing by the Foreign Minister for heads of missions nor taken on a conducted tour of the flood-affected areas.
Pakistan had also taken a fortnight to accept India’s initial aid offer of $ 5 million dollars in relief material in 2010 and insisted that it should be routed through the United Nations system. Though India later increased its assistance to $25 million, members of the diplomatic community privately observed that the initial Indian response to the 2010 floods in Pakistan was delayed and niggardly.
Meanwhile, bilateral engagements between the two countries continue with the eighth Director General level talks on drugs trafficking concluding on Tuesday with a decision to enhance mutual cooperation “through effective and sustained steps to control drugs trafficking’’. They signed a Memorandum of Understanding on `Drug Demand Reduction and Prevention of Illicit Trafficking in Narcotics Drugs, Psychotropic Substances and Precursor Chemicals and Related Matters’.
Since the weekend, the local media has been reporting that Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif had instructed his officials to procure World Health Organisation-approved medicines from India at the earliest. The formal request was received by the Indian High Commission in Islamabad on Tuesday.
Essentially, the request is to allow a team to visit India to purchase the medicines and the High Commission has agreed to facilitate the process, particularly fast-tracking visas which normally take at least a month to materialise. The other option for procuring these medicines was France but that would have been too time-consuming.
Punjab is the most affected province with as many as 3,800 cases in Lahore alone and 4,000 more such instances across the most populated province of the country. While Punjab is struggling to deal with dengue, Sindh is once again in the grip of floods; rendering multitudes destitute.
In a marked departure from last year during the devastating floods that inundated a third of the country, India was invited this time to a briefing organised by the Foreign Office on Monday to apprise the diplomatic community about the damage caused by the floods in Sindh. Last year, the Indian High Commissioner was not invited to a similar briefing by the Foreign Minister for heads of missions nor taken on a conducted tour of the flood-affected areas.
Pakistan had also taken a fortnight to accept India’s initial aid offer of $ 5 million dollars in relief material in 2010 and insisted that it should be routed through the United Nations system. Though India later increased its assistance to $25 million, members of the diplomatic community privately observed that the initial Indian response to the 2010 floods in Pakistan was delayed and niggardly.
Meanwhile, bilateral engagements between the two countries continue with the eighth Director General level talks on drugs trafficking concluding on Tuesday with a decision to enhance mutual cooperation “through effective and sustained steps to control drugs trafficking’’. They signed a Memorandum of Understanding on `Drug Demand Reduction and Prevention of Illicit Trafficking in Narcotics Drugs, Psychotropic Substances and Precursor Chemicals and Related Matters’.
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