PESHAWAR, Oct 30: The decision of federal government to end conducting free test of hepatitis C and B has badly affected about 15,000 under treatment patients in the province and Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata), sources say.

The government has been providing free hepatitis treatment and investigative facilities under the National Programme for Control and Prevention of Hepatitis (NPCPH) in the province since the launch of the programme in 2005. Centre of Excellence for Molecular Biology, Lahore, had offered to conduct free Polymerise Chain Reaction (PCR) test for all the patients when the programme was launched.

A month ago, the centre informed the NPCPH about the withdrawal of free PCR test facility that affected 14,500 hepatitis patients in Frontier province and Fata. A patient of hepatitis B or C is required to undergo PCR test after three to six months and even after one or two years.

“This is the basic test through which we determine that the patient is positive or negative for B or C type of the disease. The cost of PCR is Rs8,000 and poor patients can’t afford it,” sources said. They added that the decision to withdraw the free PCR test facility could badly affect under treatment patients.

At the moment 2,500 hepatitis patients have been getting free treatment in NWFP and Fata under the programme, while 12,000 new cases have been registered. It is feared that all these patients will be left with no option but to discontinue their treatment, because PCR test is extremely necessary for them during treatment.“Earlier, we took blood samples of the patients and sent them to Lahore through courier services,” sources said, adding that results of the tests were made available to the patients between a period of two to four weeks and the patients were advised treatment accordingly.

They said that they had informed the federal government that withdrawal of free PCR test facility had hampered the treatment and diagnostic process of the patients.

“We are waiting for the response because most of the patients have expressed their inability to conduct the test from their own resources,” sources added.

After doing away with the free PCR, the federal government had named Lady Reading Hospital, Hayatabad Medical Complex and Peshawar Medical College for PCR tests. But these hospitals, they said, conducted tests on payment.

According to the directives of federal government, the provincial government should support the patients financially in conducting the PCR but it had no budget to pay for the tests of patients.

The federal government had started five-year NPCPH in 2005 with a cost of Rs2.58 billion that was increased by the present government to Rs15 billion. According to sources, the government should continue conducting free tests to facilitate at least those patients who were currently being treated.

“Otherwise, the huge amount which had been spent on the treatment of the patients would go down the drain and the patients would get harmed instead of benefiting,” they added.

“We decided to continue or discontinue the treatment after the result of the PCR. If it’s negative, the treatment is declared successful. In case of positive PCR, we continue treatment,” they added. They said that there were other tests, such as HBS and HCV for hepatitis B and C respectively but the cost of those was affordable.