Foreign spouse and Thalassaemia

On the pre-text of combating Thalassaesmia, Dictator Gayoom introduced discriminatory bars against Maldivians with foreign spouses, a cowardly act to cling on to power at any cost. [DO political article, 2nd sentence of the 5th paragraph]

Is this true? We couldn't find any documentation of this anywhere (our team has access to a limited amount of records). Anyway, we decided to get a medical position on this statement.

We called National Thalassaemia Center to get their opinion. Dr Farzana was not available for comment and the person who answered the phone said "there is no one else who can provide information" at the center.

We then called Ministry of Health, even though we have insiders, to get an official word. The girl who answered the call said that neither Dr Sheena (Director General of Health Services) nor Dr Azeez (Deputy Minister) were available for comment.

We then called IGMH where we were told, by PRC counter, that the only person allowed to communicate with the media was their spokesperson. That turns out to be Dr Yasir. It appears his mobile phone is on mute, as he was apparently unaware that we were calling him repeatedly.

At SHE, we were told to talk to Ms Jeehan, a counselor. She could not be contacted either.

Left on our own, we turned to a team of doctors affiliated with the Medical Investigator team. We posed the question to them.

There apparently is no truth to the inference that marrying foreigners would increase the incidence or disease burden of Thalassaemia in the Maldives. On the contrary, everyone agreed that diluting our Thalassaemia riddled gene pool with foreign genes would benefit the Thalassaemia situation.

Conclusion:
The justification or reason for the "foreign spouse bar" is not correct! It is unlikely to be the documented reason for the legal clause. Medical opinion is that the inference is false.

And Yes: being un-contactable is a fashion!