n the West, there are wig banks where one can donate hair to make free wigs for cancer patients. The same concept has now been introduced here by the non-profit organisation Pakistan Youth Forum. Titled Hair to Help, the project initiated hair donation drives from August 2012, starting from Islamabad which was a great success. `In June 2013 we held another drive at KMC in Karachi to encourage people with long hair to donate a minimum of 10 inches of their tresses for cancer patients and we managed to raise Rs90,000 in funds` says Syed Fahad Ali at Hair to Help.

Mehak, a student who volunteered as a hair stylist at the hair drive, not only cut and styled people`s hair at the event but also donated her own. Twenty-year-old Fateah Afreedi, a Karachi-based law student, who donated her waist-long hair did so in memory of her grandmother whom she lost to cancer five years ago. `I had been hunting for a foundation here so I could donate my hair,` she says.

Fahad says that when patients approach Hair to Help, they are asked for their medical reports and a prescription from their doctor stating that the patient can wear a wig; in some cases the scalp becomes sensitive during treatment and wigs are not advisable. `After we have scanned a patient, we send the donated hair to A.M.

Aziz, a wig-maker who has the pieces custom-made from Bangladesh and China as in Pakistan only synthetic wigs are made. This reduces the cost of the human-hair wigs to something like Rs3,000.

With support groups and concerned individuals like these, Pakistan too is on the right track to help make life easier for cancer patients and their families. E -M.M.S.