I WORK as a consultant ophthalmologist at a renowned Islamabad eye trust where hundreds of patients undergo eye surgeries every day. Patients are provided with gowns and shoes when they enter the operation theatre. L ast week it was a heartbreaking moment for me when a patient wrongly accused me of racism because he had to wait for a few minutes for his operation theatre shoes. He said he was given this treatment deliberately because he was from Sindh.
As a doctor, I was deeply hurt as we doctors are above all these boundaries. I personally don`t even ask my patients where they are from before operating on them. It`s sad how deeply poisoned we, as a nation, are. I apologised for the delay.
I had only one thing to say to that patient, I am Pakistani, and not Sindhi, Baloch, Punjabi or Pathan. It is time we got over this mentality and identify ourselves as Pakistanis only.
