Microcephalics forced to beg on Pakistan's streets

Outside a Muslim shrine in this dusty Pakistani city, a "rat woman" with a tiny head sits on a filthy mattress and takes money from worshippers who cling to an ancient fertility rite. Nadia, 25, is one of hundreds of young microcephalics -- people born with small skulls and protruding noses and ears because of a genetic mutation -- who can be found on the streets of Gujrat, in central Punjab province. Officials say many of them have been sold off by their families to begging mafias, who exploit a tradition that the "rat children" are sacred offerings to Shah Daula, the shrine's 17th century Sufi saint. "These are God's children. We are proud to look after her," said Ijaz Hussain, the shrine's government-employed custodian, as Nadia shrieked unintelligibly and put coins in a battered wooden box at her side. According to local legend, infertile women who pray at Shah Daula's shrine will be granted children, but at a terrible price. The first child will be born microcephalic and must be given to the shrine, or else any further children will have the same deformity. Hussain said Nadia was just a young child when she was dumped at the shrine 20 years ago in the dead of the night. Her parents were never traced, he says. Pakistan's government says it has tried to crack down on exploitation of the "chuhas" (Urdu for rats) and says it plans to set up a shelter in Gujrat to rehabilitate them. The shrine stopped officially accepting microcephalics in the 1960s when the government took over the site. But not only does it still keep Nadia at its gate, the town's beggar masters also keep the superstition alive. The high incidence of microcephalics in Gujrat, an industrial city of around one million people, has long been a bone of contention. The popular belief among many Pakistanis -- that cruel beggar gangs clamp the children's heads in infancy -- is strongly denied by government and advocacy groups, who say there is no evidence to support this. Recent medical studies say the most likely cause is that the normally rare recessive genes behind many microcephaly cases crop up with greater frequency because of the common custom of marrying cousins in Pakistan.