HEALTH issues that had been keeping Karachi`s doctors on their toes since the third week of August (1969) continued throughout the month. On Aug 30, the Epidemic Diseases Hospital (EDH) received five patients of diphtheria an infectious disease with inflammation of mucous membrane of throat from different localities of the city.

All of them were children below 12 years of age and had contracted the infection from their playmates or class fellows at school.

Not that the city administrators weren`t alert to the situation. On Aug 26, it was reponed that the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation`s (KMC) health department had plans to launch an extensive citywide health education campaign in midSeptember to enable the citizens understand the problems of insanitation. The drive was to coincide with the close of the monsoon season when the remaining set of germs, the authorities thought, would be washed away. The health education squads would move from one neighbourhood to the other, delivering lectures and giving demos to the citizens on how to remain healthy. The focus was on the people of slum areas where sanitary conditions were poor.

Health education wasn`t the only problem that Karachi was faced with at the time. On Aug 27, the chairman of the All-Pakistan Displaced Persons Conference, Justice M. B. Ahmad, demanded protection of the rights ofmigrants who had come over to Pakistan from the minority provinces of undivided India. He told journalists in Karachi that the Muslims of minority provinces of British India were given assurances by the `makers and formulators of Pakistan` and regretted that the promises were not kept. He called for an end to the quota system in the recruitment to government services, and lifting of the restrictions imposed by the previous regime on `free movement and settlement of Muslims from across the border`. On the subject of the quota system, he argued that bulk of the migrants were adjusted against the two per cent quota of Karachi due to imposition of `peculiar restrictions` and the `reluctance of the officers` in issuing to the migrants domicile cenificates of any other region or city.

As for Karachi`s rich cultural life, two imponant events took place that week. First, on Aug 28, noted critic Mujtaba Hussain explained thedevelopment of Urdu poetry at a literary sitting at the Karachi Press Club. He assened that Urdu shairihad always mirrored the culture, customs, political aspirations and life in society.

Second, on Aug 31, a drama critic wrote in Dawn that for all his experience and dramatic attainments Aakhir-i-Shab, an Urdu translation of Jean Paul Sanre`s play Men Without Shadows, was a kind of a new beginning for distinguished director Ali Ahmed.

Aakhir-i-Shab, the 14th presentation of the Avant-Garde Ans Theatre staged at the Adamjee Science College sponsored by the Ans Council, was arguably Ahmed`s first literal translation of a foreign play.

Like most other plays by the French existentialist philosopher, Sanre, Men Without Shadowswas not a drama of action and movement its conflict was rather static.

Despite all this and considering the serious imperfections that a local dramatist had to cope with, Ahmed had made a very meaningful and largely fruitful attempt. (Aakhir-iShab is the story of a group of French resistance fighters during the Second World War, held captive by three mercenary officers of Gen-Petain.) His translation was good though the direction seemed odd. Still, as a serious drama, it`s a contribution to the Karachi stage and had enough moments of quality to redeem its faults. The cast included Farida Hashmi, Haroon Arif Kamal, Masood Hyder, Zafar Masud, Irshadullah Khan, Haroon Ausaf, Latif Kapadia and Ahmed Siddiqui. And the sets were designed by eminent anist Mansur Aye.