Punjab health minister on trial in Nebraska

By Khalid Hasan

WASHINGTON: The first public trial of Punjab Health Minister Dr Tahir Ali Javed will start in Nebraska next week, charged as he is with causing 99 hepatitis C infections when he was practising medicine in this country.

Dr Javed’s attorneys are under a gag order from the judge. The suit being civil in nature in a state court, the authorities here may not be asking for the accused’s extradition from Pakistan.

Jury selection begins next week. When reports about this scandal appeared in Daily Times last year, Dr Javed denied them and, in fact, attributed them to Zionist propaganda.

According to a Freeport, Nebraska-datelined report in the World-Herald newspaper by medical correspondent Nichole Aksamit, “Though settlement details remain private, court records and some involved confirm that more than half the malpractice lawsuits filed against Dr Tahir Javed and his former Fremont cancer clinic have been settled out of court. In 2002 and 2003, state health officials linked the reuse of syringes and other unsanitary practices at Javed’s clinic to 99 hepatitis C infections. The clinic closed after Javed returned to his native Pakistan. The state later revoked his medical licence and that of his head nurse, Linda Prochaska. As the first case approaches trial in Dodge County District Court, settlements continue to trickle in.

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