Nuh

As-salam alaykum (Peace be upon you) everybody! Today we proceed with Life Makers. We talked before about four basic fields: unemployment, industry, agriculture, and a little bit of health. We stated, for each of the previous fields, a project that should be carried out as a start, not as an end. We are moving step by step because we are seeking to achieve a revival for an Ummah (nation) that has suffered from backwardness for about 200 years. The word ‘suffered’ does not really express the state of our Ummah. Therefore, in each of the previous fields, we introduced a project and assigned it to some of our youth, ladies and gentlemen, so that they could begin to carry it out. The projects are as follows:

2. Industry: The project of attaching importance to crafts and other professions.

4. Health: The project of Health Forums (these are teams that seek to raise health awareness among people).

These are the four different fields that we have covered so far. You can follow, by looking at the screen, the four fields with their four projects. Actually, at the beginning of every new episode, I feel worried that people might forget the previous projects but if Allah (SWT) wills they will not, by virtue of the efforts of the Life Makers everywhere and by virtue of our informatory role. Now, let me ask you a nice question: how are we ‘making life’ through those 11 fields? Actually, we are erecting an ark. To make it clearer, let me ask you another question: is Life Makers a project of erecting an ark or a project of merely manufacturing some products? Is it a project of erecting or a project of producing? Surely, you are all wondering what the relation between the two is. Let me clarify it more. In the project of manufacturing pens for example, workers may put a target of producing, say, 100,000 pens a year. By the end of the year, they feel satisfied if they have produced 50,000 pens, or even 60,000 pens. Now consider another example of a person who works on erecting an ark. If by the end of the year, he found out that not a single piece of wood was set up and not a pin was hammered, has he succeeded or failed?

Our project is like the ark of Nuh (AS) (Noah) that we talked about in Ramadan. Noah’s ark was meant to rescue people from the flood, and so is ours. It is meant to rescue people from the flood of backwardness that has overwhelmed us for 200 years. The flood will strike us soon and those who seek protection behind the walls of their homes and among their families are like Noah’s son. Allah says what can be translated as (Noah’s son saying): “‘I will betake myself to some mountain; it will save me from the water.’ Noah said, ‘This day there is no savior from the Decree of Allah except him on whom he has mercy.’” (TMQ, 11:43)[1].

The flood will carry away everything and the only way to be safe is to help in erecting the ark. In Ramadan, we talked about Noah’s ark, asked Allah (SWT) to help us, and we called upon some people to build, others to plant trees and a third group to set up the wood. We are erecting a huge ark, so never give up; this is the very idea I want to deliver. Those who are not yet interested in any of these projects will surely be interested in one of the coming ones. The coming episodes are full of many important things.

Now we have raised the question: can we achieve revival without giving attention to health conditions? Of course we cannot; but why? Due to many reasons:

First: Your health is the vehicle you ride on your path to reform the world and achieve revival. It also helps you worship Allah (SWT); then, it carries you to the Day of Judgment until you end in paradise. To make a long story short, if the elements of revival were available to any Ummah, yet not enough health care was available, the revival would never be achieved. Actually, this is the case with our countries. Thus, all the elements of revival are useless if the human body, which enjoys a high level of physical and psychological health, is lacking.

Second: We are seeking revival, not for the sake of having soaring buildings, enchanting gardens, or huge factories, but actually for sake of mankind. The goal of the revival is primarily to bless human beings with happiness and preserve their dignity. This is the origin of creation. The simple projects - cultivating the roofs of buildings, and learning crafts, are all done for the sake of mankind. Thus how can that same human being, for whose sake all this will be done, suffer from illness and pollution that surrounds him everywhere? How can it be that he drinks contaminated water and breathes polluted air, and when sick, he is given no care? What kind of revival is that?

Health is, thus, the criterion of revival. If you want to know whether a revival has been achieved in a certain country or not, look at how greatly it values human beings. To realize the value of human beings, look at the way the sick are treated in that society. By that international criterion, you will come to classify that country as developed or non-developed. Applying this to the United States, we classify it as a developed country where human beings are given much care when sick or weak. Now consider the accident that took place in al-Azhar district in Egypt. About two weeks ago, a man carried out a suicide bombing in a public, tourist area which resulted in the death and injury of many innocent souls: tourists who obtained visas to come and enjoy themselves in Egypt in safe conditions, and some other Egyptians. The accident, which is condemned by religion and all legislative laws, caused causalities, both tourists and citizens. Then, the ambulance arrived. Surely, you know the rest. Who was rescued first? Where were they carried to? Actually, the first to be rescued were the tourists who were carried by the ambulance to Dar al-Fouad Hospital, one of the high-ranking hospitals, whereas the citizens were carried to al-Hussain Hospital, a low-ranking one. Was that a sort of hospitability or is it that each was carried to the hospital of his rank? How come and where is the dignity of the citizens?

Do you now understand the relation between the revival and health? Your health reflects your value. Thus, man’s health is very important and this sheds new light on the whole issue. The revival is not a starting point. It is health that represents the starting and the ending points. No revival can be achieved without health, and through health, one can judge if a revival has truly been achieved or not. Hence, health has become the starting and the ending points of any revival. However, the question that remains is: do the current health conditions across the entire Arab world enable us to achieve a revival? To answer this question scientifically, let us first examine our current health conditions. They are painful indeed. Frankly speaking, the Arab world has become the home of so many serious diseases. Let me skim with you over a few examples:

1. Mortality rate among children: A million and a half children under the age of five die every year in the Arab world due to lack of health care. Fourteen percent of the children who die before the age of five all over the world are from Arab countries.

3. Obesity: Of all the countries of the world, Saudi Arabia is the country that suffers most from obesity, whereas Kuwait ranks third. I think you all know the dangers of obesity and the serious diseases it causes.

5. Diabetes: In the Arab world, 17 million people die every year of diabetes and other blood vessel diseases.

This is the reality. Those statistics are issued by the World Health Organization and other organizations. Last episode, we suggested forming health forums, one of the main tasks of which would be to increase health awareness among people. Groups of youth are to bear the responsibility of spreading health awareness throughout the Arab world as a whole. Wake up everybody – we are falling! This is the first reality. Now let us move on to the second reality; namely, contaminated water.

Do you know what the term ‘contaminated water’ refers to? It means fresh water mixed with drainage. Can you imagine how many kidney and liver diseases might result from this? Can you imagine the bilharzias infections that can be caused by this? I wished I could issue, on the internet or in today’s episode, the names of the Arab villages that suffer from the problem of contaminated water. I call upon all charitable Muslims and all Muslim and Christian citizens in the Arab world to give those villages a hand and try to provide them with sources of fresh healthy water. The individual and the domestic efforts can be highly beneficial in this field. However, unfortunately, no statistics are available, as they are shocking indeed!

In the Arab world, does the number of hospitals meet population growth? Our population grows fiercely and continuously everyday and this will turn into a real disaster if the government, as well as the people, do not provide sufficient services for the growing population. Once, the Chinese leader was asked, “How will you feed one billion mouths?” He answered, “Do not ask that question. Instead, ask, ‘How can we benefit from two billion hands?’”

Hence, charitable people must work hard to increase the number of hospitals. We too must share in this work. The Muftis all over the Arab world have asserted that the money of Zakat (Islamic alms) can be spent in this field. Come on everybody! Do not wait for governments to act. You are the real motivators. You are the ones who can push them to act. Even if governments have not acted, we still can. Everyone must find a role to perform and quit playing the role of the mere watcher. Come on youth, ladies and gentlemen! Who is going to share with us in spreading this awareness?

What about the quality of hospitals? Do hospitals perform their roles efficiently or not? Let me tell you a story. In one of the hospitals in the Arab world, specifically in the women’s department, two ladies were lying in beds: one old lady and another young one who had been married for two years only. The old lady was supposed to have an operation of hysterectomy, while the young one was supposed to have her womb cleaned. Shockingly enough, the procedures were swapped. Where is the efficiency of performance in our hospitals? Surely, the image is not wholly dark. Some respectable and true people remain. However, this is no area for compliments.

How were the hospitals’ conditions in the Golden Age of the Islamic Civilization? Let me answer this question with no reference to any Islamic book but with reference to a German book that was translated into Arabic. The book talks about the hospitals of the Islamic Civilization and includes a letter sent by a French POW who was injured and carried to a hospital. In the letter, the POW writes, “Dear father, do not ask me if I need money or not, because actually, I do not. When I leave hospital, I will be given new clothes and 5 golden pieces, so that I do not need to work. They prevent all those who leave hospital from working until they reach convalescence. They give us money to spend during this period. I will not ask you to sell your cattle, dad, but to hasten to come here to see the magnificent place I am in. I am in the surgery room. The minute I fell injured, they carried me to it and the chief physician examined me. Then, they carried me to the bathroom and gave me a warm shower and some clean clothes to wear and to keep with me after leaving hospital. There is also a great library here and a vast hall specified for reading. Everything here is nice and clean. The beds are as soft as silk and white as snow. Last week, one of my neighbors claimed to be severely sick so that he could enjoy, for some days, those tasty slices of meat served here. However, the physicians doubted him and sent him back home after they made sure he suffered from no illness.” This is the reality of the hospitals of the Islamic Civilization.

More astonishing is the way they used to choose their hospitals. When al-Razi wanted to build a new hospital, he started by choosing a place where patients felt comfortable. He brought several large pieces of meat and threw them in various places in Baghdad. Then, he waited to see when the meat would rot. The last piece of meat to rot was indicative of the cleanest place to build the hospital (because a clean environment surrounding the meat would prevent the meat from rotting). Therefore, he chose it and started the construction. He called it al-Naseri hospital, which is nowadays one of the most high-ranking hospitals. Another example is al-Demerdash Hospital in Egypt. It was, previously, a palace donated by a lady called Quot al-Demerdashy for the very purpose of building a hospital.

Actually, we have two problems with our hospitals: the quantity and the quality. The quantity problem can be solved by building more hospitals. While to solve the quality problem, we need to call upon our governments, our health ministries, and the owners of hospitals to set some sort of criteria, like the ISO guidelines, that guarantee a high level of performance and that can be very strictly supervised.

Nowadays, the Arab world imports medicines that cost it four billion dollars a year. In 1996, this number was 2.5 billion dollars, as recorded by the World Health Organization. The reason is that all the new medicines are compounded by International companies, while the Arab World plays only the role of the consumer. The number of companies that worked on producing medicines 20 years ago was 7,000. Currently, the number of companies has decreased to 1,000. This is because companies get together and merge seeking to improve the level of their research. On the other hand, our companies increase in number seeking to gain more money, though they do nothing more than packing medicines! Therefore, the Western companies became stronger and stronger while ours became weaker and weaker. The question is: who supervises the increase of the number of the pharmaceutical companies in our countries?

Now, let us observe the situation of pharmacy students in the Arab world. Do they work on compounding new medicines? What do they study? Actually, in our countries, a pharmacy student is one of the following three:

1. Someone who seeks to graduate from university just to work as a medicine dispenser in a pharmacy. Is he sufficiently trained to perform his job efficiently? That is the question. A young pharmacist once told me about a man who came to him suffering from diarrhea. The man wanted to buy a medicine called Nimarol. The pharmacist, mistakenly, read it as Normalin, which is a laxative. Can you imagine?

2. Someone who works as an agent for one of the International Medicine Companies. He propagates for the company’s products and directs part of his efforts towards inventing new illusive ways by which he can bribe physicians. He offers them presents and trips in return for prescribing the company’s medicines to their patients.

3. Someone who works in pharmaceutical companies where the active ingredient of the medicine is imported. His only job is to boil the medicine, add ammonia to it, and then pack it. Rarely are the active ingredients of the medicine produced in the Arab world; only the Western countries produce them. Recently, India became one of the largest producers of the active ingredients of medicines, although we still regard it as a country of a lower status than ours.

Just try to imagine our situation! There is no Arab Muslim pharmacist who decides to go ahead and discover a type of medicine! Where are the professors of the School of Pharmacy? Why do they not take the youth by their hands to do this? Why do the businessmen not sponsor the education of our youth abroad? Personally, I know an Iraqi pharmacist who works in England as a scientist. He invents medicine in one of the biggest pharmaceutical companies there. He felt so bad about himself that his country was not getting any benefit from him that he decided to be useful to his country. Thus, he went back there but he could not find a job. Do you know why? There is no place for his specialization in the Arab world.

I assume you will ask me, “Then, what do you want us to do?” Well, we need a hundred youth to invent medicine five years from now. They should have persistence and study abroad.

Among what the Prophet (SAWS) used to say, “O Allah, I seek refuge in You from sickness and laziness…” (Narrated by al-Bukhari). This is while we, as an Ummah, are unable to invent our own medicine! Let us take China for example. When they were threatened by the monopoly of the drugs worldwide, they started thinking of an alternative, directing themselves towards medical herbs and they succeeded greatly in that field. We too have the alternative; we have the ‘Prophetic Medicine.’ There is a book called Zad al-Me’aad, written by Ibnul-Qayyem. A quarter of this book talks about the pharmacology of the Prophet (SAWS). Now I am asking you, who will write his PhD thesis on such a subject? Right now, I will present to you a table, which summarizes the proposed solutions to all these problems.

First: The government is not above the people, (doing what it desires and not doing what it does not desire). The government initially works for the people; managing people’s interests on their behalf.

People should be aware of this fact. Who works for whom? Who is the employer and who is the employee? The people and the government should be aware of this concept. This is the first guarantee. The government should declare facts to whoever it may concern. They should state the number of hospitals being built. They should give complete, serious and precise facts and they should announce what has been achieved at the end of each year. This is how the world is developing around us, so why should we not follow suit as well? The world has changed and we have to reform ourselves!

Second: People, Life Makers and women have two roles to play in order to guarantee achieving the objectives. First of all, the Life Makers program should create health forums. Secondly, we must not accept any disorder in these objectives without reforming and following up on them! We will complain and follow up until we reach the objective. We will send letters and start demanding from our government.

Right now, I will tackle the idea of health forums. Dr. Samer Sherbeeny will now explain in detail how it will be carried out. He is working as a doctor in England and is a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of Great Britain. He will explain the idea of health forums:

“Well, after what you have heard from Mr. Amr, I will simply and quickly explain the idea to you. The aim of this health project as he explained to you is to improve the health of the Ummah, and to preserve its most precious wealth, which resides in its individuals. This will be through spreading health awareness. A part of this problem is that doctors and scientists, in general, are accused and blamed for the difficulty of their language. They say it is not easily understood. I will try, as much as possible, to simplify the issue.

“First of all, what do we mean by health awareness? This means changing habits, ways of thinking, lifestyles or any other bad traits that we have become used to. All of this in order to change one’s behavior towards something that allows an improvement in one’s situation and the prevention of specific diseases. This is called the preventive health in medical terms.

“This topic is the root of a complete medical branch called preventive health, of which we are playing a simple role. However, it will be very effective in the long run, if Allah wills.

“Spreading health awareness means that you as an individual will be working for your own health and that of the people around you.

“What will you use? You will use every modern and common means in this field, if Allah wills, such as posters, signs, video tapes, CDs, as well as the creative methods such as plays and discussion groups. It would be nice to have doctors with us, but if not possible, it is not necessary that the participants have any medical background.

“When will this project start? It will start tonight, if Allah wills. How? If anybody has the will to participate in this project, he has to start the research by forming groups of his family, relatives, neighbors and colleagues at work. They should gather themselves, log onto www.amrkhaled.net and register their names on the forum. It is extremely important that they start to make partnerships either with doctors who are following with us, businessmen, with public societies, the Red Crescent or universities. There are enormous partnerships that we have to develop during this period. This also includes libraries and schools. They could play a great role in spreading the principles of health awareness.

“Now, what is the role of these forums? First of all, we will be the ones who train them. This training is going to be very important in order to do these things effectively in the forums. This will be done, to a great extent, in partnership with the WHO (The World Health Organization), and with the Qatari Health Organization, and with specialists from Britain, Kuwait, Bahrain, Palestine and Saudi Arabia.

“This is your role. We will provide you, via the internet, with material and tools of awareness. Examples of the most common tools are leaflets, booklets, books, video tapes, CDs and the internet. However, as I mentioned before, there are many creative methods such as plays, discussion groups, and other things. We can provide you with thoughts to fulfill the role of raising awareness on the internet. This is also a chance for creativity from the groups themselves. What is so important is that we should agree on this now, because this partnership between you and us is going to be a continuous one. This means that you have to visit the site weekly, and follow up on a monthly basis to agree on the projects, and follow up with their implementation, whether they target a non-contagious disease, like low or high blood pressure, diabetes, or another issue such as the purification of water, (which are really important issues) or whatever the subject is.

“Somebody might ask, why the forums? Everyone could get the information needed and start applying it! The problem is just like what Mr. Amr Khaled was saying. The governmental efforts are not enough. Whatever the governments or even the organizations do, the change in someone’s behavior will never come except from within their self. Therefore, awareness, thinking about it and its continuation is a must. Thus, from here came the idea of the forums. Let me put this in one sentence; what is required is the start of 50 forums within these next couple of weeks. Visit the site and register your names in the health section. Allah will lead us to success, if Allah wills. May Allah’s peace, mercy and blessings be upon you.”

Well, let me tell you that our aim is 50 health forums in the next couple of weeks. The number of persons needed starts from three upwards. What will they get? They will be trained by the WHO and we will help.

Every two weeks, or every month, we will agree to fight a specific disease. Every six months, we will choose the top performers from the 50 forums, and we will meet to think about the ways to improve the performance. Does that sound unrealistic?

What would you say then if I told you that some people have already done it and we have two of them! Let us have a look at the first forum. We have Ahmad and Do’aa with us today. They are from the first health forum in Mansoura. The forum consists of about 40 persons, and the number of people who have worked with them are about 900. Yesterday there was a meeting for the Arab deans of the medical schools. They invited them to come over to talk about their idea. Let us hear from them how they have started.

“We are a group of youth from Mansoura University. Our role is to share in the new revival project. Allah has led us to the issue of health. We thought that since we were talking about new revival projects, this means that we need partnerships. We already started it. We started writing down our thoughts which had to include creativity within them. The most important thing in our project is the idea of campaigns. The idea is like a tree. We said that in our Arab world we have to plant a tree which starts from correct and simple information. This tree will grow and all the Arab countries will benefit from it. We received some information from the Ministry of Health, we printed it on a poster and we distributed 6,000 copies. Nine hundred people helped us in doing so, thanks to Allah.”

There is goodness in those youth. Our nation has not died yet. It has so much goodness within it but it just needs someone to lead and then it will follow along. I have more good news. The Dean of the Faculty of Engineering of Cairo University has approved our project of plantation of the roofs. Thus, it will be carried out.

We will live for our country and our nation. May Allah (SWT) help us. Our next episode is going to be with the doctors, if Allah wills. May Allah’s peace, mercy and blessings be upon you all.

[1] TMQ=Translation of the Meaning of the Qur'an. This translation is for the realized meaning, so far, of the stated (Surah:Ayah) of the Qur'an. Reading the translated meaning of the Qur'an can never replace reading it in Arabic, the language in which it was revealed.

AmrKhaled.net © جميع حقوق النشر محفوظة
This Article may be published and duplicated freely for private purposes, as long as the original source is mentioned. For all other purposes you need to obtain the prior written approval of the website administration. For info: dar_altarjama@amrkhaled.net

Episode 40: Health – Part 2