He issued these orders while chairing a meeting regarding free treatment of cancer patients held at the CM Secretariat on Thursday. The Additional Chief Secretary Dr Hamad Agha, Secretaries of Finance and Health departments and other relevant officers attended the meeting. Professor Abdi Jameel, Head of Medical Oncology department, HMC and Focal Person of the Programme, briefed the meeting about current position of the project and presented the four years Project Report on free treatment of blood cancer patients.
The Chief Minister Pervez Khattak expressed his resolve to provide all out facilities to cancer patients of the province and assured that all required financial resources and other necessary facilities would be provided soon to HMC to enable it to continue free cancer cure for patients of the province. In this regard he also ordered establishment of a hospice at the complex within two months to house the cancer patients.
He directed the concerned authorities to immediately release funds for free cancer treatment and without any interruption. He also directed the authorities to submit PC-1 for the first-ever hospice for terminal cancer patients at HMC so it could start benefiting the cancer patients. Professor Abid Jameel on this occasion informed that Cancer treatment was extremely expensive and out of reach of most of the patients revealing that in Pakistan, most of the cancer patients belong to young age group.
He feared that a large number of young patients and our productive manpower will be lost with considerable impact on national economy and industry if the disease is not treated properly according to international standards. He further told that after successful completion of first two phases of the programme, that treated 445 patients, the third phase was being prepared that will also include medicines for breast cancer, kidney cancer and other forms of cancer.
Professor Abid Jameel told that unfortunately, the cost of latest drugs is prohibitive for Pakistani patients: costing Rs 1.4 million to Rs 3.6 million per treatment cycle. This led to a very disturbing situation where a life saving treatment was available but patients could not purchase it to save their lives.
This led to an innovative project between Government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and drug manufacturer, Novartis, which can be termed as the finest example of "public-private partnership" leading to saving thousands of lives of our countrymen. Under this project Government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa purchases two months of treatment for the first three years while Novartis provides rest of 10 months treatment free to patients. The Chief Minister on this occasion also directed authorities to look into prospects of any collaboration of HMC with newly established Shaukat Khanum Memorial Cancer Hospital in the interest of cancer patients.