eStylista

Profile: Dr Mohammed Jawad

2012-02-15T16:16:41+00:00

This profile first appeared in www.tehelka.com

The skin he lives in

Saving Face, a new documentary film has just become Pakistan's first Oscar nomination. Priyanka Gill meets its unusual protagonist Dr Mohammed Jawad

Photo: Asad Faruqi

Doctor Mohammed Jawad is surprisingly relaxed - considering he is the subject of Pakistan's first Oscar nomination. I meet him in his Harley Street consulting room to talk about his role in Saving Face. Sharmeen Obaid-Chenoy and Daniel Junge, the accomplished creators of Saving Face, had earlier won an Emmy for their documentary about the child soldiers of the Taliban in 2010. For Saving Face, she followed the doctor as he returns to his native country Pakistan to reconstruct the faces of two women who were victims of acid attack.

I am shown a short, powerful clip. Zakia is a 39-year-old woman who had acid thrown on her face by her husband when she asked for a divorce. Despite the atrocity, she is forced to return to her married home, as she can't afford to bring her children up. It is a moving, tragic tale. The story is unfortunately, not an isolated one.

Official figures state that 150 attacks happen every year, but anecdotal evidence suggests that the numbers may be in several hundreds.

Jawad is no stranger to celebrity. His best-known patient is model and television presenter Katie Piper. In 2008, sulphuric acid was thrown on her face, a horrific assault orchestrated by a vengeful ex-boyfriend. She was left blind in one eye and suffered extensive burns. The doctor responsible for her care at the National Health Service hospital she was rushed to, happened to be Jawad. The story was chronicled in a Channel 4 documentary called Katie: My Beautiful Face. The treatment she underwent was radical and as a result quite controversial. The skin of her face was removed and replaced with a substitute called Matriderm to form the foundation for a skin graft. Price was induced into a medical coma for 12 days. But the results were extraordinary. She resumed life as a model and started a foundation to help burn victims. Today, Doctor Mohammed Jawad is a trustee of the foundation.

Jawad admits that at that time he knew next to nothing about the horrific acid attacks that disfigure hundreds of faces in Pakistan every year. After hearing about his results another doctor told him that attacks were rife in Pakistan. He was already doing a lot of surgeries on children with cleft palates, he became involved in pro bono surgeries that restore acid-attack victims to some normalcy. His disgust with the phenomenon of acid attacks is palpable, as is his zeal to help. "It is an intimate, terrible crime, perpetrated by cowards attacking the woman in a very public manner. The disfigurement and scars make her a social outcast. My job is to restore not only her face but give her back her life and confidence."

Jawad uses the facilities of Indus hospital in Karachi to conduct free operations 4 to 5 times a year. On each trip he sees 15 odd patients over a few days of intensive surgery. To date he has helped around 50 women. He intends to keep doing, keep going. He also plans to set up a foundation that can streamline the efforts of the many charities that deal with this issue. "I would like to some up with a standard process that must be followed to ensure optimal treatment for these patients. If a man has a heart attack - there is a classic treatment. We must come up with ways to give the patients the best possible care, at the earliest opportunity. This would reduce the need for revisionary operations" He is also training local surgeons in best practices and techniques. The funding for the operations comes from various NGOs and foundations.

Born in Karachi, Pakistan, Jawad trained at the Civil Hospital, and later Jinnah Post Graduate Medical Centre, after graduating from Karachi University. In 1990 he moved to Ireland, joining Cork University Hospital. Plastic Surgery was not an automatic choice for the young doctor. "I toyed with orthopaedics for a short while. It was the instant gratification of plastic surgery that won me over." He equates his specialisation to Hollywood. "Movies don't save lives but they definitely enrich them. I enjoy the precision of plastic and reconstructive surgery. If you follow a certain procedure, as long as there are no mistakes, the result is predictable, and the patient sees an instant benefit." He continues to do the "boobs and lifts" that are the mainstay of plastic surgeons. But he applies the same expertise to help burn victims.

His emotional ties with Pakistan are strong and are evident in the affection and exasperation with which he speaks of the country of his birth. The level of corruption, the negligible spending on healthcare and the all-too prevalent domestic violence trouble him immensely. He speaks of the 'jugad' that well-meaning people do to circumvent the system and provide relief. "As a young doctor in Pakistan I helped organise banks of life saving medicine which would be given free to poor patients and also blood banks where the family or relatives of the patient would have to donate blood to ensure adequate supplies were available. Even drinking water in hospitals was a problem. “But we managed." he says with understated pragmatism.

The Oscar nomination for Saving Face has helped generate awareness about the scale and life-destroying nature of acid attacks. A landmark 2010 law in Pakistan now makes acid attacks punishable by a life sentence. This should hopefully be a deterrent. The first person punished by the law was Zakia's husband - lending a Hollywood-esque happy ending to the documentary. One hopes that the documentary wins. Doctor Jawad will be flying to LA for the ceremony. "I am excited about it. It has been an extraordinary experience."

Saving Face will premiere at the Human Rights Watch Film Festival on March 28 and 29th in London and will be broadcast on Channel 4 in April. HBO will air the film on 8 March

How to… use Twitter

2012-01-23T20:54:41+00:00

A friend's Facebook status sparked of this post.

Twitter is a funny thing. We all know it's there. We also know have friends who are 'on' it. But what does one do on Twitter? Where do you begin?

This is Twitter 101. If you use Twitter already - skip the post, or even better add to it via comments. The Twitter help page has all this information, but here is my take.

Twitter is a 'micro-blogging' platform i.e. you say what you have to say in 140 characters. It does play havoc with your spelling and grammar but surprisingly, one gets used to it quickly.

It is opposed to blogging (which is what I am currently doing) where you can use how many ever characters you like.

Choose a relevant 'handle'. This is your identity on Twitter. It begins with the @ symbol. Mine is @priyankagill. Keep it simple, short as it eats into the 140 character limit when people reply. Use the ' _ ' symbol if you have to. Add numbers only as a last resort. Keep it in sync with your other social profiles for simplicity and consistency.

Fill out your profile. Put up a picture. It tells other Twitter users a bit about you. If yours is a public profile, search engines will also index it. So make it count.

Find your voice. You may be a mum of two with a great sense of humour or a fashion journalist or a die-hard knitter or a book-lover. Whatever you are interseted in, I promise there are more like you out there. Use twitter to connect with them.

Tweet. Often. This means say something relevent, fun, interesting and do it regularly. By the way - its called a 'tweet' not a 'twit'. It's a verb.

Find interesting people to 'follow'. This will add what they have to say to your 'time-line' which is like your newsfeed on Facebook.

If they are saying something that resonates with you - respond to it. Do it politely. Don't be intimidated. Even celebrities reply rather naturally on Twitter - at least the nice ones do. Like Jonathan Ross (@wossy) - he once responded to me... He's lovely! So did Barkha Dutt (@bdutt). She's quite active on Twitter and a great one to follow.

Twitter is about having a conversation and occasionally evesdropping on other people's conversations. Follow Suhel Seth (@suhelseth), his brother Swapan Seth (@swapanseth) and Soni Agarwal (@SoniAggarwal) to see what I mean.

Obviously follow all the celebrities. The verified ones have a tick next to their handle. It is almost like being a fly on their walls. The more socially savvy ones tweet well and connect.

Follow friends for sure. They are most likely to support you, to have a conversation with you. But the beauty of twitter lies in how quicly you get to know perfect strangers really well.

Twitter is great for news - I follow all major news sources.

Apart from tweeting, you can also 'retweet' innteresting, informative tweets written by someone else. It is a way to send out information to your followers and share the expertise of people you follow.

For example, I follow Hussein Kanji (@hkanji). He is a hot-shot venture capitalist with a strong expertise in the tech world. He reads absolutely everything and tweets links to what he thinks is relevant. I get a big chunk of my tech news via him. I also retweet him a lot.

Use the inbuilt 'retweet' function or write 'RT' and copy, paste the tweet. ALWAYS credit the original writer. Never, ever pass on someone else's tweet as your own for obvious reasons.

You can also quote a tweet. Comment and put the " " symbols around the quoted tweet.

Always reply when someone mentions you. Be polite. Say thank you for a nice mention or a retweet or even a follow, if you can. Good manners go a long way on Twitter (as they do in real life). Engage your followers.

If someone annoys you (such people are called trolls) you can block them. I also block 'bots' - computer programmes that follow you, users with obscene profile pics and those who are plain rude!

If you begin a tweet with the handle - only people who follow both you and the other person can read it. To make it public, don't begin with the @ symbol - or at least put a "." before it.

Twitter is fun. The more you use it, the more rewarding it gets. It is a good way to pass time when you are waiting in a cue or are in transit. It also opens up your world to intelligent, wonderful people with a stimulating point of view.