KARACHI: Healthcare professionals and medical science experts on Wednesday warned if the issue of the city’s deteriorating infrastructure was not addressed immediately, the growing complaints of chronic back pain, mainly among young bike riders, could become an epidemic among the Karachiites.

Citing recent data and study, they claimed the growing challenge of backache, damage to vertebrae and repetitive injuries to spinal cord among the Karachiites were not only affecting quality of life of the bike riders, but also affecting health of women, and in many cases they even had lost their pregnancies and gave premature births.

“The government needs to address this road infrastructure issue immediately before it’s too late,” Pak-American Arthritis Centre (PAAC) Managing Director Dr Saliha Ishaq told a news conference at the Karachi Press Club on Wednesday.

“I am monitoring these cases very closely. I see that among more than 70 per cent of the people complaining back pain are those who are bike riders. They are mostly youngsters. Rheumatoid arthritis is an autoimmune and inflammatory disease, in which the immune system of a person attacks healthy cells in his or her body by mistake, causing inflammation (painful swelling) in the affected parts of the body. Rheumatoid arthritis mainly attacks the joints, usually many joints at once.”

Dr Tabe Rasool of the Dow University of Health Sciences (DUHS) defined how the depleted roads, poor quality of two-wheelers and random speed breakers were directly causing the lifetime ailments mainly to riders.

“There are discs between human vertebrae,” he said. “Over these discs, there are blood vessels. The repetitive injuries due to these broken roads and infrastructures badly damage the vertebrae alignment which leads to different and serious issues, including severe pain which is commonly called Arq-un-Nisa and spinal cord arthritis. These repetitive injuries sometimes lead to lifetime issues. So it’s time to move now and there is a three-pronged strategy - fix the roads infrastructure, quality motorbike production and healthy lifestyle.”

The experts said not only the motorbikes, but even women who travel in rickshaws in Karachi are suffering from lower back pain due to strain and injuries they suffer on the broken roads of Karachi.

They urged authorities to launch an immediate drive to repair all the main and branch roads in the city to prevent young men and women from permanent disability due to dilapidated condition of roads in the megalopolis.

“We as health professionals are very much concerned, and to address this growing challenge from our end, we have launched a free telehealth service for all those who face these problems,” said renowned rheumatologist Dr Tahir Parveen.

“At PAAC in collaboration with Ehad Medical Center (EMC), which is treating such patients at its 20 centres across Karachi, we have launched a UAN [021-111-113-423] where the patients with such complaints can get free consultancy. We guide them about the treatment and give them immediate possible remedies.”

Published in Dawn, August 18th, 2022