PESHAWAR, Oct 3: Chairman of the Frontier Foundation welfare hospital and blood transfusion services, Sahibzada Haleem, said on Monday that his organization was working to help achieve the goal of making the country, specially the NWFP, free of thalassaemia by 2015.

Speaking at a press briefing, he lauded the programme launched by the provincial government for the thalassaemia prevention and awareness at a cost of Rs3 million and maintained that efforts needed to be made for those who were suffering from the disease. He said the government should provide blood bags and medicines to the institutions working for the cause.

He said the federal government had announced a grant of Rs5 million for the foundation, of which it had received Rs2 million.

He said the organization working in Peshawar and Kohat had collected 14,075 bags of blood in two years and supplied 3,280 bags to various hospitals for emergency cases and 1,364 to Fatmid Foundation.—APP