KARACH: Pakistan’s drug regulatory authority on Tuesday approved the import of vaccines from Jordan and Turkey to fight a debilitating virus in cattle that causes a condition called ‘lumpy skin disease,’ senior officials said, following an outbreak in the southern Sindh province that has killed over 170 animals since last November.
First observed in 1929 in Zambia, LSD is a viral infection that causes fever and multiple nodules on the skin and mucous membranes of animals. The disease is transmitted by bloodsucking insects like ticks and mosquitoes and is rarely fatal. The disease does not affect people.
LSD was first reported in Pakistan’s Jamshoro district in Sindh last November. Since then, 25,866 animals have been infected in the province, of which 172 have died.
“The Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan [DRAP] has allowed two companies in Karachi and Punjab to import vaccination to deal with lumpy skin disease among animals,” said a statement circulated by DRAP officials while the body’s board meeting to discuss the issue was underway.
The statement said Punjab’s Huzaifa International could import the vaccine from Turkey and Karachi-based Aros Pharma from Jordon.
The director general livestock in Karachi, Dr. Nazir Hussain, also corroborated the development to Arab News.
Abdul Bari Khan Pitafi, Sindh Minister for Livestock and Fisheries, said on Monday the province had approached the federal government to allow the import of anti-LSD vaccines months ago, but permission was not granted in a timely manner.
“We started discussing the possibility of importing the vaccine in November 2021 when the first LSD case emerged,” Pitafi told a news conference. “After permission from DRAP, the vaccine import will now begin.”
Dr. Javed Humayun, a spokesperson of the Ministry of National Food Security and Research, said DRAP had been requested to register private firms that had applied for LSD vaccines.
“Symptomatic treatment of animals has already been advised,” he told Arab News. “The use of goatpox vaccine is recommended as an alternative to LSD vaccine in affected areas for disease prevention.”
Pitafi said the province had ordered 300,000 doses of goatpox vaccine from Punjab and hoped that 30,000 doses would be available by Tuesday.
Meanwhile, as the country as yet to import vaccines and launch a mass campaign, dairy farmers in Karachi said they were suffering huge losses due to a decline in their milk sales. LSD’s accompanying symptoms include much lower milk production.
“The disease has frightened milk consumers and our sales have sharply declined by about two million liters from 4.5 million liters that we previously supplied to the city,” Shakir Umar Gujjar, president Dairy and Cattle Farmers Association (DCFA), told Arab News.
Meat merchants have also witnessed a decrease in their revenue since scared buyers have abstained from making purchases.
“Around 75 percent of meat shops in Karachi have not been operating,” Sikandar Iqbal Qureshi, general secretary of Meat Merchants Welfare Association, told Arab News on Tuesday. “The rest of the 25 percent have remained open only to sell about five to 10 kilograms per day.”
Qureshi said up to 12,000 animals were slaughtered in Karachi on a daily basis before the outbreak of the disease.
Pakistan approves vaccine import from Jordan, Turkey following cattle skin disease outbreak
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Pakistan approves vaccine import from Jordan, Turkey following cattle skin disease outbreak
- Virus that causes a condition called ‘lumpy skin disease' has killed over 170 animals since last November in Sindh
- Sindh minister says province approached federal government to allow import months ago but did not get timely permission
Pakistan dispatches another relief consignment to Myanmar as quake death toll rises to 3,455
- The 7.7-magnitude quake hit a wide swath of the country, causing significant damage to six regions and states including the capital Naypyitaw
- It also worsened an already dire humanitarian crisis triggered by the country’s civil war that has internally displaced more than 3 million people
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) on Saturday dispatched another consignment of humanitarian aid to Myanmar, the Pakistani government said, as death toll from last week’s massive earthquake in Myanmar rose to 3,455.
The 7.7-magnitude quake hit a wide swath of the country, causing significant damage to six regions and states including the capital Naypyitaw. The earthquake left many areas without power, telephone or cell connections and damaged roads and bridges, making the full extent of the devastation hard to assess.
It also worsened an already dire humanitarian crisis triggered by the country’s civil war that has internally displaced more than 3 million people and left nearly 20 million in need, according to the United Nations.
Pakistan dispatched the second aid consignment through an air cargo flight from Islamabad to Yangon, Myanmar that carried 35 tons of essential relief goods, according to Pakistan’s Press Information Department (PID).
“Upon arrival, the consignment will be handed over to Ministry of Social Welfare & Resettlement of Myanmar by Pakistan’s Ambassador & Defense Attache in Myanmar,” the PID said in a statement.
“This consignment included tents, tarpaulins, blankets, water modules, medicines and packets of meal ready-to-eat.”
Myanmar military government’s leader, Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, has said the earthquake was the second most powerful in the country’s recorded history after a magnitude 8 quake east of Mandalay in May 1912.
He said 4,840 people were injured and 214 missing, according to a report on state television MRTV. Min Aung Hlaing said 5,223 buildings, 1,824 schools, 2,752 Buddhist monasterial living quarters, 4,817 pagodas and temples, 167 hospitals and clinics, 169 bridges, 198 dams and 184 sections of the country’s main highway were damaged by the earthquake.
Earlier, Pakistan’s mission in Myanmar handed over the first consignment of 35 tons of humanitarian assistance to chief minister of Yangon region for onward distribution among those impacted by the disaster.
Islamabad said the critical supplies sent on Saturday were meant to provide immediate relief to the affected population in Myanmar.
“The Government of Pakistan and National Disaster Management Authority of Pakistan reaffirms its unwavering commitment to humanitarian relief efforts and standing in solidarity with the people of Myanmar in their time of need,” the PID added.
Pakistan Navy ship conducts counter-piracy patrols in Arabian Sea
- The patrols were conducted off the east coast of Somalia in support of Combined Task Force-151
- The CTF-151’s mission is to disrupt piracy at sea in order to protect the global maritime commerce
KARACHI: Pakistan Navy Ship (PNS) Aslat has conducted counter-piracy patrols in the Arabian Sea, its Directorate General of Public Relations (DGPR) said on Saturday.
The patrols were conducted off the east coast of Somalia in support of the Combined Task Force-151 (CTF-151), one of the five task forces operated by 46-nation Combined Maritime Forces (CMF), which is currently being led by Pakistan Navy.
Pakistan Navy-led CTF-151 is taking proactive measures to enhance its presence in the region, remaining vigilant of the piracy threat in the Gulf of Aden, the vicinity of Socotra Gap, and off the east coast of Somalia, according to the DGPR.
“These efforts aim to deter piracy, armed robbery, and other illicit activities to ensure the safety of vital Sea Lines of Communication (SLOCs),” it said in a statement.
Pakistan Navy took over the command of the CTF-151, a multinational body set up in 2009 as a response to piracy attacks in the Gulf of Aden and off the eastern coast of Somalia, in January for a record 11th time.
The CTF-151’s mission is to disrupt piracy at sea and engage with regional and other partners to build capacity and improve relevant capabilities in order to protect global maritime commerce and secure freedom of navigation. It operates in conjunction with the EU’s Operation Atalanta and NATO’s Operation Ocean Shield.
“The deployment of PNS Aslat reflects Pakistan Navy’s firm resolve to combat piracy and armed robbery, while also protecting global maritime commons and ensuring the free flow of maritime trade in the region,” the DGPR added.
The CTF-151 command is rotated between participating nations on a three-to-six-monthly basis. Prior to Pakistan Navy’s takeover, the CTF-151 command was held by the Turkish Navy.
Other nations that have led the CTF-151 include Bahrain, Brazil, Denmark, Japan, Jordan, Kuwait, Pakistan, the Philippines, New Zealand, Republic of Korea, Singapore, Thailand, Türkiye, the UK, and the US. A variety of countries assign vessels, aircraft, and personnel to the task force.
Pakistan President Asif Zardari expected to be discharged from hospital within 48 hours after COVID treatment — physician
- Asif Ali Zardari was brought to a hospital on Tuesday after he complained of suffering from fever, breathing problems
- Dr. Asim Hussain refutes rumors about President Zardari’s ‘serious’ health condition and says it is gradually improving
KARACHI: Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari, who tested positive for coronavirus this week, is likely to be discharged from hospital in next two days, his personal physician said on Saturday.
Zardari was brought to a private hospital in Karachi from Sindh’s Nawabshah city on Tuesday after he complained about suffering from fever and breathing problems, local media outlets reported.
On Wednesday, his personal physician, Dr. Asim Hussain, confirmed the president had tested positive for coronavirus and a team of medical experts was looking after him.
Speaking at a press conference on Saturday, Hussain refutes rumors about President Zardari’s ‘serious’ health condition and said it was gradually improving.
“At present, a low-risk variant of the coronavirus is still spreading in Pakistan. No matter what political opponents say or exaggerate anything, the health of the president is very good,” Hussain said.
“Asif Zardari’s meetings are restricted, only doctors have access to him. A panel of expert doctors is monitoring his health.”
Zardari, the widower of Pakistan’s slain first woman prime minister Benazir Bhutto, was appointed president for a second term in March last year. He previously served on the same post from 2008-2013.
Zardari, a landowner from Sindh and co-chairman of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), a key member of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s ruling coalition, rose to prominence after his marriage to Bhutto in 1987.
He was widely criticized for corruption scandals that led to the collapse of Bhutto’s government in 1990.
Pakistan resolves to raise voice against Israeli oppression in Gaza, support Palestinians
- The statement came after Israeli forces launched a ground offensive in Gaza City, expanding their operations as rescuers reported at least 30 killed
- Pakistan does not recognize Israel and calls for an independent Palestinian state based on ‘internationally agreed parameters’ and pre-1967 borders
ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Saturday resolved to raise his voice against Israeli oppression in Gaza and continue Pakistan’s support of the Palestinian people, Sharif’s office said.
The statement came after Sharif’s telephonic conversation with Hafiz Naeem-ur-Rehman, chief of the Jamaat-e-Islami religious party, in which the two figures expressed concern over Israel’s unprovoked bombing of unarmed Palestinians in Gaza and the silence of international powers on the strikes.
Israeli forces have launched a ground offensive in Gaza City, the military said on Friday, expanding their operations as rescuers reported at least 30 killed across the Palestinian territory since dawn.
Since renewed military operations last month ended a short-lived truce in its war with Hamas, Israel has pushed to seize territory in the Gaza Strip in what it said was a strategy to force militants to free hostages still in captivity.
“The Prime Minister reiterated his resolve to raise his voice at every international forum against the ongoing Zionist oppression of Palestinians in Gaza and to continue Pakistan’s support of [the Palestinian cause],” Sharif’s office said.
“Pakistan’s position is clear regarding its support for the unarmed Palestinian brothers and sisters who are victims of Zionist oppression.”
Pakistan does not recognize Israel and has consistently called for an independent Palestinian state based on “internationally agreed parameters” and pre-1967 borders.
The South Asian country has consistently called for a cessation of Israeli military campaign in Gaza and strongly condemned the resumption of Israeli strikes in the territory, saying they could fully reignite the 17-month-old war. Islamabad has also dispatched more than two dozen aid consignments for the Palestinian people since Israel began pounding Gaza in Oct. 2023.
The latest bloodshed in the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict was triggered in October 2023, when Palestinian group Hamas attacked Israel, killing 1,200 and taking about 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
Israel’s subsequent assault on Hamas-governed Gaza has killed over 50,000 Palestinians, according to Gazan health officials, while also triggering accusations of genocide and war crimes that Israel denies. The assault has internally displaced nearly Gaza’s entire 2.3 million population and caused a hunger crisis.
Young Pakistani introduces smart tools to bridge AI gap for millions of Sindhis worldwide
- Sindhi, an Indo-Aryan language with a history that spans approximately 2,400 years, is spoken in Pakistan and India, and by diaspora in several regions
- Fahad Maqsood Qazi has developed previously unavailable Sindhi text-to-speech and speech-to-text AI models and shared on open-source platforms
KARACHI: Fahad Maqsood Qazi was performing a seemingly straightforward task of developing an automated artificial intelligence (AI) dubbing system for his software firm in Pakistan’s southern city of Hyderabad last year, when he hit the wall: the fundamental text-to-speech (TTS) and speech-to-text (STT) models simply didn’t exist for his native Sindhi language.
This unexpected hurdle while working at Flis Technologies ignited a passion in the 23-year-old IT professional to bridge the AI gap for a language spoken by around 40 million people globally, including a significant diaspora whose children risk losing their linguistic heritage, and soon he started working on his Sindhi-language TTS and STT systems.
In August last year, he began manually transcribing hours of Sindhi audio content from YouTube, stories, audiobooks, vlogs and news reports to form a training dataset. Qazi took a sigh of relief when he discovered that a Google employee, Asad Memon, had recently added Sindhi to Mozilla’s Common Voice project, a global effort to crowdsource voice data for underrepresented languages.
Qazi merged the Common Voice data with his own and began training the AI models. By January this year, he had built functioning Sindhi TTS and STT systems. Sindhi also lacked a tokenizer, a crucial component to process text in AI models, so Qazi built his own. Months of rigorous work, training and refining various models led the 23-year-old to a significant breakthrough that can help future generations of his community to connect with their roots — Sindhi, an Indo-Aryan language with a history that spans approximately 2,400 years and its origins dating back to the 3rd century BCE.
“Since Sindhi isn’t formally taught in most diaspora communities, many young Sindhis grow up without the ability to read or write the language,” said Qazi, who graduated in computer science, explaining a lack of exposure to Sindhi could lead to a gradual loss of identity.
“My tools aim to change that. By allowing people to communicate in Sindhi through speech and text, my tools would help them stay connected to their roots.”
In March, Qazi publicly shared these models on LinkedIn and uploaded them to HuggingFace, an open-source platform for machine learning models, making them freely available to developers and researchers worldwide, which marked a pivotal moment for Sindhi in the digital age.
Recalling the days when he started working on these tools, Qazi said he realized that Sindhi was missing from the AI revolution and without publicly available speech datasets, tokenizers or linguistic tools, the language had virtually been excluded from the digital future.
“This was shocking for us,” he told Arab News. “Imagine, 40 million Sindhis in the world, yet no one had built these essential AI systems for their language.”
Qazi says his work will have a “profound impact,” particularly on Sindhi-speaking children growing up in countries such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, the United States and the United Kingdom.
For the diaspora communities wherein the language isn’t formally taught, these Sindhi AI tools offer a vital link to their cultural identity, according to the IT professional.
These models can be integrated with mobile keyboards for Sindhi voice-to-text (VTT) messaging, while the TTS model can be used to listen to written Sindhi content, according to Qazi.
They have the potential to empower uneducated adults and the elderly within the Sindhi community, both at home and abroad.
“This means everyday conversations with family and friends, even over messaging apps, can happen in Sindhi. That kind of natural, daily use can help preserve the language and keep it alive across generations,” he said.
“A parent who doesn’t know how to read Sindhi will be able to read stories out loud to their children through my text to speech model. Elderly people who never learned to read or write Sindhi can now speak to search for information and listen to responses.”
Qazi hopes his AI tools will play a significant role in long-term growth and integration of the Sindhi language on global digital platforms.
“This technology can play a key role in ensuring that Sindhi doesn’t just survive, it thrives in the digital age,” he said.
“By giving Sindhi a presence in AI systems like TTS and STT, I am ensuring it to be part of global platforms such as voice assistants, educational apps, audiobooks, and translation tools. That kind of integration was impossible before.”
