rabies still kills

Rabies still kills thousands in Pakistan

Every year millions of people in Pakistan are bitten by dogs, and thousands are believed to die from  rabies a deadly viral disease that can almost always be prevented with timely treatment.

Health experts say Pakistan still does not have a strong nationwide system to track rabies cases. Because of this around 5,000 people are estimated to lose their lives each year after being bitten by rabid dogs.

Rabies is a viral infection that attacks the brain and nervous system.  Once symptoms appear the disease is almost always fatal with a survival rate of less than 1%.

The first signs of rabies usually develop about six weeks after a bite from an infected animal.

Common symptoms include fever headache body aches a sore throat and difficulty swallowing.  As the disease progresses it becomes much more dangerous.

Children living in rural areas and on the outskirts of cities are among the most affected groups.

A study published in the international journal Acta Tropica found that the high number of rabies cases in Pakistan is linked to low public awareness delays in seeking medical care

and weak disease prevention efforts.

Health experts say that immediate medical treatment after a dog bite including wound cleaning and timely vaccination can prevent rabies.

They also welcomed the federal government’s recent in principle approval of the National Rabies Prevention and Control Framework calling it an important step toward improving rabies prevention and saving lives.

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Each disruption brought about its own ethical challenges, and each time, the industry persisted not by opposing the technology but by creating new standards to regulate it. Artificial intelligence is the newest and possibly the most significant example of this trend. What sets it apart from previous disruptions is the remarkable realism of synthetic content: earlier types of misinformation needed some level of narrative development, whereas AI can now generate the very evidence needed an image, a voice, a document ,Journalism has long relied on certain standards as evidence. This brings up a difficult yet essential question: can the technologies that jeopardize trust in journalism also aid in its restoration? The answer, with caution, is affirmative. News organizations are increasingly utilizing AI-assisted verification tools, reverse-image analysis, and metadata forensics to combat the misuse of these very technologies. 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  • Why your brain stays alert in a new place

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  • Artificial Intelligence vs Human Creativity

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  • |

    Subjective aesthetics versus literary brilliance

    Litigation over artistic quality reveals more about the critic’s personal taste and ideological leanings than it does about the intrinsic value of the literature itself. A prominent Bangladeshi academic initiated a debate across literary circles when a short video clip went viral online. In this brief excerpt from a presentation delivered at a university literary festival, the scholar dismissed the acclaimed author Shahidul Zahir. He claimed that Zahir does not even qualify as a third-rate artist. He  labeled him instead as a third-class writer whose language is thoroughly uninteresting. He similarly critiqued another modern Bengali prose writer, Akhteruzzaman Elias. For this case, he dismissed his writing style as endlessly monotonous. This judgment raises critical questions about literary aesthetics and the metrics used to evaluate global literature. Does a critic’s subjective boredom justify reducing a writer’s work to a low rating? Analytically, the fiction of Shahidul Zahir demonstrates the exact qualities that define world-class literature. Shahidul Zahir was never a conventional storyteller who somehow aimed to comfort his audience. Rather than offering comfortable narratives, his work exposes uncomfortable truths beneath established historical accounts. His portrayal of wartime violence, political opportunism, and societal compromise during and after the 1971 Liberation War forces readers to confront disturbing realities. Zahir connects the grim details of local life with magical and surreal elements. He utilizes oral storytelling traditions. He also combined surreal metaphors with layered depictions of the human condition. His narratives have bizarre occurrences such as animals acting as caretakers or war collaborators feeding human flesh to animals appear surprisingly believable against the background of ordinary towns like Sirajganj or Old Dhaka. His surrealism reflects real-world atrocities that were often equally unimaginable far from being mere fantasy. The academic’s critique centered primarily on two claims. Firstly, Zahir’s writing is dull. Secondly, his portrayal of the 1971 war is historically inaccurate. However, a closer look at these claims exposes significant flaws in the critic’s premise. The critic in question strongly favors traditional, highly formal, Sanskritized prose (sadhu bhasha) and rejects everyday spoken dialect (cholito bhasha) for serious discourse. In contrast, Zahir’s prose relies on the living, informal, and at times raw language spoken by everyday people. Therefore, rejecting an author because their prose reflects the authentic cadence of public speech reveals an elitist preference rather than an objective literary standard. The scholar accused Zahir’s acclaimed novella Jibon O Rajnoitik Bastobota (Life and Political Reality) of presenting stereotypical representations. He further pointed the supposed depiction of war collaborators wearing skull caps. Yet, nowhere in the actual text does such a detail exist. The critic appeared to project his own assumptions onto the text rather than reading what was actually written. Zahir’s novella accurately captures the painful political reality of post-liberation Bangladesh, where former wartime collaborators were gradually integrated back into mainstream power structures. Literary scholars often define world literature as creative work that responds to the global dynamics of modern capitalism and political change. Zahir’s novels illustrate how global economic forces interact unevenly with local feudal structures. In his masterpiece Shei Raate Purnima Chhilo (It Was Full Moon That Night), Zahir explores the rise of a powerful rural leader under state-sponsored political reform. The narrative illustrates how modern capitalist development mixes with lingering feudal mentalities. This mentality then creates a system where local elites hold unchecked power. Zahir constructs a portrait of a society caught between tradition and modern governance. Furthermore, Zahir’s treatment of the 1971 war connects local experiences with international geopolitics. In his stories, wartime memories constantly surface like fresh grass breaking through soil. His words speak about how national liberation was simultaneously a local struggle for survival and an event influenced by global Cold War tensions. The argument that a nation must produce literature directly accessible or marketed to Western readers in order to be considered world-class relies on a flawed premise. Global literary status should not depend solely on English translation or commercial visibility. Countless profound authors around the globe write within their local contexts. Such marvelous authors produce works that match the thematic depth of international figures like Franz Kafka or Gabriel García Márquez. As a matter of fact, dismissing Shahidul Zahir as third-class overlooks the artistic, historical, and linguistic power of his work. His fiction stands as an extraordinary accomplishment in modern literature. He is the one that challenges, provokes, and immortalizes the complex human experience far beyond the boundaries of narrow critique.  

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