India and Pakistan may be traditional rivals. But the hostility between the neighbours and tension on the borders were no obstacles for Mohammad Arif, a 56-year-old Pakistani businessman to come to India for medical treatment.
Hailing from Peshawar, Arif had been suffering from Parkinson's disease for four years and was in a critical stage when he was admitted at the multi-specialty Apollo Hospital here in India's southern state of Tamil Nadu recently.
Though incidents like recent terrorist attack at Pune which had even forced the two countries for a while to think of suspending all dialogues between them, they did not come in
the way of the Pakistani national receiving treatment here.
"Arif has undergone a 13-14 hours long 'deep brain stimulation'(DBS) surgery on February 7. He has improved 70 per cent now. He will be returning home next month," a senior doctor at the hospital said.
The DBS surgery involves implantation of a medical device called a brain pacemaker, which sends electrical impulses to specific parts of the brain, he said.
Diagnosed with the Parkinson disease in 2005, Arif had decided to undergo treatment at a foreign hospital as such treatment was not available at Pakistan.
"Since treatment for the disease was not available in Pakistan, the option before us was either to go to Singapore or US. But, we came to India and now the surgery has successfully completed", Arif's son Faiq Arif told reporters
here.
After the surgery, Arif's condition had improved much."The treatment expense was also very cheap in India. The cost incurred for the surgery was Rs nine lakh which is comparatively much less than the US," he said.
Arif's wife Shafqat Nazli had also good things to say about India. Thanking the doctors at the hospital, she said "before the treatment, he was experiencing various problems including cold shoulder and stiffness. But now we are very
happy as he has recovered 70-80 per cent".
She said they would leave for Pakistan on March one.
Consultant Neurologist at the hospitals Dr S Yogaraj, who led the surgery, said Arif would take at least three months to a year for complete recovery.