November 25, 2003	Tuesday	Ramazan 29, 1424

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PESHAWAR, Nov 24: The World Health Organization (WHO) has recommended steps to put brakes on the increasing number of patients suffering from hepatitis in Buner district.

The world health agency, however, said that the number of patients confirmed so far in the district “is not alarming.”

The number of total patients is 1,478 accounting for just 0.3 per cent of the whole population of 5,71,492 persons, but could become a threat if quackery wasn’t checked, said a report compiled by a two-member mission comprising Dr Quaid Saeed, WHO’s emergency medical officer, and Dr Ghulam Subhani, deputy director at the director-general health services.

The mission visited Buner on NWFP Assembly Speaker Bakht Jehan Khan’s request to prevent the spread of hepatitis C in his home constituency, Buner.

The mission, which visited Buner on Oct 30, had been tasked to find out the causes and gravity of the situation with a view to building a preventive strategy.

The report said that DHQ hospital Daggar had registered 845 patients of hepatitis C, whereas 599 patients had been registered by Dr Mohan Kumar. Another 276 cases of suspected hepatitis had been reported from all the public-sector health facilities in the district.

According to available record, 457 patients were admitted to rural health centres (RHCs) and civil hospitals for hepatitis treatment.

The report notes that the local doctors blamed quackery for the spread of this disease. It quoted the EDO Buner as saying that many quacks working in villages did not use sterilized disposable syringes for every patient.

EDO also said that under the law they could not stop them from practising due to lack of authority.

The 96-bed District Headquarter Hospital Daggar, conducted 1,379 surgeries in various specialities, but the blood bank record showed that blood was transfused immediately to the patients without storing.

It also emerged that routinely other than cross matching, screening is done for hepatitis B and HIV but not for hepatitis C. The reason cited by laboratory technician was that they received screening kits for these two diseases from Peshawar but not for hepatitis C for which they locally purchased the kits and charged Rs200 for every test from the patient.

Some of the patients refuse to perform the test and they are then transfused the unscreened blood. A total of seven — five hepatitis C and two B — blood donors were tested positive in the last six months at the blood bank.

Out of 145 total blood transfusions in DHQ hospital, only 113 were screened for hepatitis C while 32 units of blood were transfused to patients without being screened for hepatitis C.

A private laboratory registered 175 cases of hepatitis C last year. The mission failed to obtain data from the UNHCR on the prevalence of hepatitis C in Koga refugee camp, in Buner, because there was no such data on the ailment.

The WHO says that the 3 per cent of the world population suffered from hepatitis totalling approximately 170 million people.