Rare disease makes two children from Quetta hang on to the sun for life

QUETA: For Shoaib and Abdur Rasheed, the sun is their lifeline.

The two children who live in a suburb at Quetta city suffer from a rare disease. When the sun rises they are bright and chirpy, when it sets they become lifeless.

“I have five children. But only these two suffer from this disease,” said Hashim, their father.

Doctors at Islamabad’s Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS), where the children have been brought for treatment, are perplexed at this strange case.

PIMS Vice Chancellor Dr Javed Akram said, “This case is a challenge for the entire medical community. We need to first identify their defective genes. Their entire data is being shared with Johns Hopkins University [in the United States] and hospitals for neurological diseases in England.”

Doctors have recommended over 200 tests to the duo they have named as ‘solar kids’.