PESHAWAR, May 4: Most of the cancer patients in the NWFP are not seen by oncologists because of lack of facilities for the treatment of the disease, doctors told Dawn on Saturday.

Instead of benefiting from the progress in medical, surgical and radiation oncology, patients of breast, lung and pancreas cancer were treated by surgeons and physicians, they said.

"The physicians and surgeons are treating liver and prostate cancer, leukemia and lymphoma but they are not professionally authorized to do so," a doctor said. Cancer, which was curable owing to advancement of medicine, was still deemed to be incurable here because the doctors did not know about newresearch in diagnoses and treatment, he said.

There are two cancer treatment centres in the NWFP, the 60-bed Institute of Radiology and Nuclear Medicine (Irnum) and a 17-bed medical oncology unit at the Khyber Teaching Hospital.

The patients visiting Irnum have to wait for weeks for admission and treatment because of heavy workload. About 15,000 people have been enrolled for treatment during the current year at Irnum and the oncology unit at the KTH has treated about 500 patients.

A doctor said there were 10 oncology wards in Sindh, 15 in Punjab, three in Islamabad and one in Balochistan, while the NWFP health department was yet to establish such wards in different cities of the province.

A small unit was set up at the Ayub Teaching Hospital, Abbottabad, in 1999 but it was closed down and the woman oncologist who headed it went to Saudi Arabia. Irnum was established in 1974 by the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission and the unit at the KTH was established by the NWFP health department in March 1999.

The KTH unit will soon get registered with the United States-based International Cancer Research Group, which will provide Rs400,000 for the treatment of each patient.