PESHAWAR: An awareness campaign launched by the health department regarding early diagnosis of cancer has led to improvement in referral of the patients in initial stage of the disease and their chances of treatment, according to a health official.

“Last year, we started a drive to scale up the level of information of doctors about signs and symptoms of cancers so they can diagnose and refer the patients in early stage of the disease to relevant doctors for better treatment,” Prof Abid Jameel, head of oncology ward, Hayatabad Medical Complex, told Dawn.

The “Physician Awareness Programme for Cancer,” has doubled referral of the patients as the doctors were now in a better position at the district hospitals to investigate different kinds of cancers and send the patients to oncologists as early as possible, he said.

Prof Jameel said that a three-day workshop was currently in progress at Saidu Medical College, Swat, to improve the doctors’ knowledge and techniques about treating cancer. He said that similar events had taken place in Mardan, Peshawar, Swabi and Abbottabad, which had yielded good results.

Oncologist says doctors at local hospitals being trained on early diagnosis of cancer

He said that patients were coming from districts with complete diagnosis done at the local hospitals. He said that doctors at the workshops were told about the presentation of cancers, tests and primary management. He said that the campaign focused on the medical colleges to cover both teachers and students.

Prof Jameel said that in view of the scarce facilities and shortage of oncologists in the province they had planned the drive as part of the KP’s free treatment programme of cancer patients in collaboration with Novartis to take preventive measures alongside ensuring provision of medicine to the patients.

He said that under the three-year (2014-16) programme costing Rs8 billion, over 1,200 patients were being treated free of cost. He noted that it had been a dilemma with cancer patients that majority of them weren’t diagnosed promptly.

He said that the impact of the drive was evident because they were now receiving patients with breast, blood, lung, liver, cervical and other cancers referred by local doctors.

He said that the province recorded about 5,000 new patients every year, but many of them developed complications due to late arrival to oncologists. Because of lack of experience on part of local doctors the patients were treated for fever and pain, but were diagnosed with cancer when it had become incurable. “We plan to cover more districts this year,” he said, adding that a report about the impact assessment of the programme would also be published.

Prof Jameel is also supported by Dr Sahibzada Mahmood Noor and Dr Shahid Ayub in the campaign for improving physicians’ communication skills leading to hassle-free treatment of the patients. He said that the drive was aimed at putting an end the quarrels among doctors and patients. He said that confidentiality of patients so they could easily tell their story should be at the core of medical ethics.

Published in Dawn, August 30th, 2015

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