Zaitoon’s two children, girls aged four and two, have been suffering from fever for over a week. “I was finally able to persuade my husband they needed medicine,” she said.
However, in the low-income shanty town where Zaitoon and her husband, a labourer, live, literate neighbours are not easy to find. According to the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), literacy still stands at only 50 percent in Pakistan.
In Balochistan, the least developed province, levels slump to 36 percent. Only 27 percent of women in the province, according to the government’s National Economic Survey of 2007, are literate, compared to a national average of around 45 percent, according to official data.
