The shop was named Haji Muhammad Shafi & Sons. The family set up their first shop in Meethadar’s Sarafa Bazaar (Pakistan’s first jewellery market). Originally named Muhammad Asim, Jofa was born into a family of jewellers from Delhi, who migrated to Karachi after Partition. Today I am into clothing, tomorrow I may quit and start something new from scratch.” This may also explain why he has experimented so much – from jewellery to ice-cream, to real estate and fashion design. Now that I am working with a purpose, I am fine,” he says, adding that although he had no prior experience making PPE, or even thought about doing so, it is part of his nature to challenge himself by doing different things. As a hyperactive person, I found it difficult to adjust to the lockdown being idle made me bored and depressed. His target is to produce a total of 5,000 – and then stop. This one met with approval and he was given the green signal to continue – and today (mid May) he has already supplied over 3,000 pieces to multiple hospitals and NGOs across Pakistan including Bahawalpur, Faisalabad, Hyderabad, Islamabad, Karachi, Khuzdar, Lahore, Peshawar and Quetta. Armed with this information, within 48 hours he was back at JPMC with a second prototype. Dr Jamali, however, guided him as to the correct SOPs to make PPE. He made his first prototype and presented it to Dr Seemin Jamali, ED at the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre (JPMC). This is when he resolved to do something about it. “If this could happen in Spain, how much worse would the situation be in Pakistan?” I have never done anything like this before,” he declares as he seats himself at his desk to address my questions.Īccording to him, the idea to make PPE popped into his head after he read an article on Bloomberg about doctors in Spain using garbage bags due to a chronic shortage of PPE. “This is the finest achievement of my life.
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Upon arrival I am ushered into a room full of cardboard boxes where Jofa (in black jeans, a navy blue shirt and a mask of his own creation on his face), is occupied with the task of stuffing PPE into them before dispatch to Civil, Indus and Shaukat Khanum hospitals. To find out more about the initiative and the man himself, I pay Jofa a visit in his office in Karachi. Soon afterwards, other fashion designers also began to address this acute shortage – and today were you to enquire about what is 2020’s trendiest outfit, the answer may well be a hazmat suit and the most sought after fabric taffeta.
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Pakistani fashion and jewellery designer Asim Jofa made headlines recently for being the first Pakistani fashion designer to take the initiative of producing personal protective equipment (PPE) for healthcare professionals under the #AsimJofaCares initiative.