May 03, 2008	Saturday	Rabi-us-Sani 26, 1429

ISLAMABAD, May 2: The federal health ministry is working on a plan to revive the faltering Prime Minister’s National Programme for the Control and Prevention of Hepatitis.

“The programme is being revised to improve the impact of the Rs2.5 billion scheme,” federal health secretary Khushnood Lashari said on Friday.

The findings of a research of the Pakistan Medical and Dental Research Council on the prevalence of Hepatitis B and C, which are likely to be released later this month, would form the basis of the revised strategy.

The five-year programme launched in 2005 by the previous government has been suffering from multiple problems. It has not only stopped registration of new cases but the treatment of thousands of patients had to be stopped midway because of unavailability of Interferon injections.

Also not much progress was made on the prevention side which the programme’s managers emphatically emphasise constituted 75 per cent of the overall project and included behavioural change, safe blood transfusion, safe injections, hospital waste management, safe drinking water, surveillance and Hepatitis B vaccination.

Federal Information Minister Sherry Rehman has already ordered a probe into the failure of the programme after media reports which suggested that millions of patients were likely to be left without access to treatment under the programme.

Sources in the health ministry revealed that distortions in the programme were caused by political interference during the previous government.

Deliberating on the revision in the strategy, he said it would attempt to bring in more resources into the programme by inclusion of provinces and Bait-ul-Maal and introduce necessary changes in the programme’s design.