Pakistan, April 25 -- In Dera Ghazi Khan, the numbers are grim and growing. The fact that 81 individuals have resorted to suicide by ingesting wheat pills in intensive care units this year alone should be enough to shake us out of our complacency. When we consider how this figure adds to 215 similar cases last year, and over 270 attempts in the two years prior, the scale of this tragedy becomes horrifyingly clear.

The wheat pill (aluminium phosphide) is sold as a grain preservative. But in some of Pakistan's poorest districts, it has become a weapon of last resort. Cheap, potent, and almost universally accessible, it offers a ghastly certainty to those who have lost faith in all else. Within minutes of ingestion, it destroys vital organs...