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| September 28, 2005 | Wednesday | Sha'aban 23, 1426 |
Delays in fund release hinders thalassaemia project launch
PESHAWAR, Sept 27: The NWFP health department is yet to formally launch a project aimed at spreading awareness about prevention of thalassaemia due to lack of funds, it is learnt.
NWFP Health Minister Inayatullah Khan had inaugurated the project in early June, for which the government had pledged Rs30million.
“The government was supposed to release Rs5million in the first year for the three-year project. But owning to its failure to provide funds, we are unable to formally kick off the project,” said sources.
Lack of funds had been caused due to bureaucratic hurdles created by the officials of the finance and health departments, sources said.
They said that recently the Accountant-General’s office had put the condition of providing an audit copy of the project to release the amount.
The project is supervised by the head of child health department in the Khyber Teaching Hospital, Prof Abdul Hameed, while its members include Director Pakistan Medical Research Council Dr Zahoorullah and Dr Fazle Raziq.
According to them, they had planned to conduct a study to ascertain the prevalence of the ailment in the province.
“Thalassaemia is a genetic disease and awareness about it among the people could play a vital role in its eradication,” they said.
They have planned a crash programme that includes preparation of a directory of index cases, which will be followed by a strategy to screen 60 members of the families of the patients’ fathers and 60 of their mothers’ families.
Sources said that 25 per cent of children, whose fathers and mothers were carriers of thalassaemia major, remained at the risk of being inflicted with the ailment.
They said that a provincial screening centre would be established at the PMRC at the Khyber Medical College and similar programmes would be launched in the districts where the prevalence of the ailment was high.
The project also aims at launching a programme to educate careers of thalassaemia major and other people about the disease, they added.
The longest surviving child suffering from thalassaemia in the province was 26-year-old, whose brother, being a doctor, took extreme care of him, they said.
They said that bone marrow transplantation was a permanent solution to the problem but it cost Rs1.2 million with Rs10,000 per month needed for subsequent treatment.
“The only way to save the children from the disease was through peoples’ awareness regarding the causative agents of the ailment,” they added.
According to them, Iran and Saudi Arabia had eliminated the disease by linking registration of marriages to screening of the couples.
“Once the funds are made available, we will constitute mobile teams for screening the high-risk families,” they said and added that the programme could be strengthened at a later stage by involving gynaecologists in it.
Sources said that the programme also aimed at paving the way for legislation for termination of the pregnancies found positive for the disease.
They said that gynaecologists and paediatricians at the teaching hospitals of the city would be trained and a thalassaemia and genetic disease centre would be established at a proposed children’s hospital.
When contacted, the secretary and director-general of the health department expressed ignorance about the delay in fund release.
“I am not updated about the project,” Secretary Health Abdul Samad Khan, told this correspondent.
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