When survival is a misconception
When survival is a misconception
Fight against polio is less a fight against a disease and more a fight against myths and misconceptions. Some characters create these myths and misconceptions deliberately and others inadvertently. Either way, the situation calls for more flagrant efforts to counter it as we have failed seven more human beings in this fight this year.
Recently, someone tweeted, “Tell me your survival stories”. And an influential twitterti and popular writer replied: “By age 3 had to learn to walk a 2nd time, with polio affecting back, leg. But lots of support from family, friends…Graduated…Finally made editor where I’d started.” An impressive story, envy of many it is for sure.
To understand if it is a success or a survival story, I dusted off all the dictionaries in my study and none corroborated the concept of survival in it. Since the twitterti is a prolific writer, I made calls to some key language teachers in Islamabad and no one agreed that survival is a relevant term for polio.
Prof Dr Shahid Siddiqui, dean at the National University of Modern Languages (NUML), said that the concept of survival denotes that somebody has been cured. If a disease is incurable, then there is no question of survival, he said.
Ms Madeeha Arslan, who is writing a story book for children with an interest in literature, argues that if a breast cancer patient has her breast removed and outlives her disease, we call her a cancer survivor. Likewise, there is no harm for a polio victim to call themselves survivors.
Dr Abid Masood, of Department of English, International Islamic University Islamabad (IIUI), said consult any dictionary and you will find that recovery from a disease means survival. He added that since polio is not fatal in most cases, use of word survival leads to generation of some misconceptions in the society.
Dr Muhammad Zaman, founder of Department of Sociology at Quaid-i-Azam University (QAU) explains that these misconceptions have far-reaching ramifications for society at large.
He explains that in this case, there are two terms – “polio affected” and “polio survivor”. There is a sea of difference in the impact that they leave on the masses. “The former gives an impression that life is not normal as it has been affected by polio. The latter gives quite a different meaning – life is normal as the patient has survived the disease,” he explained.
Having practiced, taught and researched media for about two decades now, I can understand that use of words create perceptions that ultimately grow larger than reality. There comes a point when you can neither defend the reality, nor live with a false perception.
Misconceptions and myths both are false perceptions. When we counter the propaganda of clerics against vaccination of polio, we also need to clear misconceptions about the disease. The former editor who has tweeted his survival story is very clear-headed person with huge following, which is why I have quoted him. Such people are opinion makers. He must have not meant what can be perceived of the polio part of his story. But misconceptions about this disease need to be brought out so that fight against it can end in a success.
— Hassan Shehzad
Article source: https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/457670-when-survival-is-a-misconception