MAKING A DIFFERENCE
Sask. chief medical health officer Dr. Saqib Shahab may be leading the fight against COVID-19 here, but he says the people of the province are stepping up to do their part.
Like his famous knit sweaters, Dr. Saqib Shahab doesn’t wear out easily.
His mother-in-law’s sister knit him one of his favourites, a brown sleeveless vest, as a wedding gift 29 years ago. She knit him 12 in all — the same design, different colours.
Those knits have stayed with Shahab over his long career, which spans over 30 years from Pakistan to Regina. He hasn’t bought a new cardigan in more than 15 years. “They last forever,” he said. Now, Shahab is enduring the challenge of his career. As Saskatchewan’s chief medical health officer, he’s the central figure and public face of the province’s fight against the COVID -19 pandemic.
In February and March, Shahab was pulling “very intense” 20-hour days. He slept from midnight to 4 a.m. and ate on the go. He faced “fear and uncertainty” about how hard the virus would strike Saskatchewan. Since then, thankfully, the pace has calmed down a little.
“Stealing that half-hour or hour in the evening to go for a walk with my wife, for example, or spend some time with my kids has been really refreshing,” Shahab said during an interview with the Leader-post.
COVID-19 isn’t Shahab’s first pandemic. He began his work as a deputy chief medical health officer in July 2009. It was the second wave of the H1N1 pandemic. Shahab was called on for a media scrum on his first day on the job.
That experience feels like an initiation for what he’s now been thrown into: a once-in-a-lifetime public health crisis.
“It’s one of those one-in-100year events,” he said.
A hundred years ago, the third wave of the Spanish Flu was spreading around the globe, and Qudrat Ullah Shahab was a threeyear-old boy from Kashmir.
Shahab’s father would have to live through another epidemic. When he was about eight or nine years old, there an outbreak of bubonic plague in his village.
Qudrat Ullah Shahab would write about those experiences years later, when he’d made a name for himself as an eminent writer and a top-level bureaucrat. He began his career under the British Raj. He served as principal secretary to Pakistani governors general and, later, to President Mohammad Ayub Khan.
Pakistan’s oldest English-language newspaper called Qudrat Ullah Shahab a “master storyteller.” His gentle gaze still stares out from a 15-rupee stamp, part of Pakistan’s “Men of Letters” series. Dr. Shahab still keeps a book of those stamps in his Regina home.
“He gained a lot of recognition both as a public servant and as a writer,” he said of his father. “But I always remember him as a very humble, simple man, very soft-spoken, not afraid to be silent.”
Shahab, who has become known for his calm demeanour, said he learned about the value of silence from his father.
“His legacy has lived on,” he added. “I think it’s an honour and privilege to be his son.”
The elder Shahab died in July 1986, on the very day his son graduated with a medical degree. Though the younger Shahab was born in Britain, he studied in his father’s Pakistan.
He placed top of his class at Rawalpindi Medical College in Punjab province. Shahab returned to the United Kingdom for internal medicine training and later received a master’s of public health from Johns Hopkins University, a top medical school in the United States.
Before Shahab came to Saskatchewan, he was working with a German aid organization to build a school of public health in Pakistan. Remembering those years, from 1995 to 2001, Shahab is filled with thankfulness mixed with pangs of regret.
“I toured all the areas of Pakistan, the remote areas, and that is a privilege because you learn how generous people with nothing are. They will open their hearts and their homes and share their food,” he said.
“That was in many ways, as a public-health practitioner, the happiest years of my life.”
Stealing that half-hour or hour in the evening to go for a walk with my wife, for example, or spend some time with my kids has been really refreshing. Saqib Shahab
Shahab left that role in 2001. The Germans were packing up, and Shahab’s family was growing. He chose Saskatchewan, first working in Yorkton and becoming deputy chief medical health officer in 2009.
“We had a second child on the way, and like many professionals we left the country that needed us and came to the land of milk and honey, which in this case was Saskatchewan,” he said.
Though he loves his new home, he feels guilt for those left behind.
“I, like many, do carry a sense of, a bit of a guilt,” he said. “We always look back to how can we help, and how can we, maybe at a later date, do more.”
Shahab and his wife Izzah now have three sons. The oldest is a medical resident, while the youngest is now, Shahab said, “unhappy because he’s going to miss his Grade 8 graduation.” The boys have matching knit vests, just like their father’s, another gift from their ever-crafty great-aunt.
Family obviously is important to Shahab. A good marriage is like a good cardigan, he says, well-worn and comfortable.
When he isn’t walking through his Regina neighbourhood with his wife, Shahab spends his free time reading, watching movies or doing photography. Through the pandemic, he hasn’t extended his virtual household beyond his actual household. But Shahab stays connected. He’s on the phone whenever he can find a spare moment.
“I’ve talked to friends and family from all over the world more in the last two or three months, despite the time pressures, than I’ve ever talked in the last 10 years. So I find that quite amazing,” he said.
Shahab’s friends have caused him a great deal of worry as the pandemic spread to places he has worked. He said the hardest moment of the crisis came when he learned of former colleagues, doctors in the United Kingdom, who were put on ventilators in intensive-care units. His closest friends, fortunately, have recovered.
In Saskatchewan, Shahab’s greatest challenge has been uncertainty.
“There was a tremendous sense of uncertainty about where we were heading, before it became apparent — that was a big realization — that as a population, we can control it,” he said.
That realization came around the third week of April. He feels an incredible sense of relief witnessing what Saskatchewan people have done to contain the disease.
As chief medical health officer, Shahab is at the centre of Saskatchewan’s COVID-19 response. He’s a doctor, a spokesman and a civil servant. While his father advised a president, the younger Shahab is now a key adviser to Premier Scott Moe.
Shahab has almost-daily meetings with Moe and Health Minister Jim Reiter. He said their working relationship has remained “very positive” throughout the crisis.
“We all understand our roles and responsibilities,” he said. “There’s a very open communication, and I think that’s really important.”
Shahab is most visible during his news conferences in the basement of the Saskatchewan Legislative Building. He said he tries to communicate with the public in a way that respects the intelligence of Saskatchewan people.
“If you stick to the facts and explain them in a consistent way, I’ve always found that the public can understand nuances,” he said.
“I’m very careful not to be always very prescriptive; I think you need to lay out what you think is the best approach and keep it up to the public to make the right decision for them.”
But sometimes he’s faced questions about holding back information, including about where rural cases are situated or additional details about fatalities. He said he’s “very conscious” about privacy.
“I absolutely want to share facts that are useful to the public, and that’s what I have promised to do and I try to do,” he said. “Anything that I can talk about that is useful to the public for them to decide what they should do to stay safe, I absolutely will share.”
Shahab said his training has prepared him for the pressure he’s now enduring, and he has others to lean on.
“Sometimes the public face is just you, but you share the load with many other very competent people,” he said.
“It’s very much a team effort.”
That includes provincial officials, but also the public health network he co-chairs with his federal counterpart, Dr. Theresa Tam. High-profile health officers such as British Columbia’s Dr. Bonnie Henry and Quebec’s Dr. Horacio Arruda are also members.
When he feels overwhelmed, Shahab reaches out to “trusted colleagues.” He tries to stay especially close to Western Canadian provincial officials who face similar challenges.
“I think that that collegiality and mutual support is very important, so that you don’t feel like it’s just you,” he said.
Shahab thinks Saskatchewan’s fight against COVID -19 has been successful. But that work is far from done, as a second wave could strike this winter. “We can’t take our eye off the ball,” he said. Whatever comes, he thinks efforts so far have left the province well prepared.
“So far I feel very confident about how we’ve been doing in terms of the whole government, but also the broader society, the public, businesses,” he said. “I think it’s been quite fascinating to see how people have jelled together for the most part and rode in the same direction.”
As Saskatchewan people adapt to the new reality of living two metres apart, they can look to the family man who relishes small pleasures as an example of how to find meaning in an uncertain world.
The restaurants might be closed, but there’s plenty of time for the simple things.
“I think it’s time to pause and reflect in terms of how little you need to get pleasure out of life,” Shahab said. “You can’t go anywhere, but you can spend time with your own family.”
Anything that I can talk about that is useful to the public for them to decide what they should do to stay safe, I absolutely will share.