Doctors Refuse To Touch His 'Unclean' Body. Is This 2017?

Even with all the progress we've made over centuries, terrible disparities continue to haunt our society. One of the most rampant taboos being the notion of impurity, any rational being would say, it's 2017, move on, but sadly, the society refuses to change it's regressive ways.

Case in point: alleged apathy of doctors in Pakistan, led to death of a sanitary worker who was battling for life, their reason? His body was covered with sewage filth and they refused to treat him unless he was 'cleaned'. 

According to a report in Tribune, the worker named Irfan Masih along with his three fellow workers fell unconscious while cleaning a manhole on Chorr Road in Umerkot.

“The doctors refused to treat him because they were fasting and said my son was ‘napaak [unclean]’,” claimed Irshad Masih, the mother of the deceased to the Tribune. 

All of them were rushed for treatment to Civil Hospital Umerkot, however the doctors refused to treat them and asked the attendants to wash their bodies.

While  the other three sanitary workers were referred to Hyderabad and later Karachi for medical treatment, Irfan remained at the Civil Hospital.

Irfan's brother, Pervez Masih, told reporters that after his body was cleaned doctors sent for an oxygen cylinder which was empty. He said, "before they could arrange another cylinder, he [Irfan] died,” he told local media.