LAHORE: Muhammad Ali, 14, had been leading a normal, happy life until the last month when he was diagnosed with blood cancer.
His father, a carpenter, took him to the Shaukat Khanum Memorial Cancer Hospital and Research Centre (SKMCH&RC) on May 23 only to be referred to the Children’s Hospital.
“Ama ji, please do something for my treatment and don’t let me die,” pleads Ali to his mother, Suraya Bibi, at his home, who was not admitted by either hospital.
Overburdened hospitals keep refusing cancer patients for one reason or another.
“Our hospital is enormously overburdened with patients as our 40-bed oncology department is catering to nearly 80 patients,” Children’s Hospital Medical Director Dr Ehsan Waheed Rathore says.
The SKMCH&RC has the largest set-up for cancer care in Pakistan in the private sector.
SKMCH&RC Chief Executive Officer Dr Faisal Sultan cited certain reasons for referring the patients to other health facilities, including the disease burden.
He says about 150,000 patients are developing cancer every year in Pakistan.
“About 45, 000 to 50,000 people with suspected cancers visit our walk-in clinics in Lahore, Karachi, Peshawar and Multan every year,” he said.
About a child with leukemia, he said, there are only a handful of pediatric cancer specialists in Pakistan to treat about 10,000 children with cancer in Pakistan each year.
“It is obvious the Shaukat Khanum hospital cannot accept all of these – in fact, no hospital in the world can itself treat this number of patients,” he said.
In view of this, he says, his hospital has developed an ‘acceptance criteria’ for every major type of cancer. The basic principle guidelines for the criteria include the proven cancer, a type and stage that is likely to be treatable, and available capacity for that specific type of cancer.
He says the childhood leukemia of a certain type has age and other biological/laboratory criteria to ensure that the available capacity is used for the most likely to benefit cases.
In other cancers the restriction is by stage of disease. In some cancers (germ cell tumors), even stage four is acceptable since in those cancers even stage four holds a reasonable chance of cure/improvement. Thus this is a highly specialized work.
“Of those we cannot accept, we counsel them and guide them towards alternate facilities where they may be able to get treatment”, he said. In the case of Ali, his mother says, they did not get any counseling or guidance from either hospital.
She questions the purpose of establishing such big hospitals where there is no place for his son.
She says the Children’s Hospital did admit her son, but only for three days. She says her son was treated rudely by doctors and medics and was later discharged without any notice.
She says even though the bone-marrow test facility is available at the government hospital but doctors asked her to take Ali to Shaukat Khanum Cancer Hospital for this purpose.
On lodging protest, they discharged her son on Friday, she said.
“Now my son is awaiting death at home as we have left with no other option,” she cries.
The situation will remain the same, Dr Sultan says, unless there is more investment in healthcare, training of specialist doctors in relevant fields and allocating more money to pay for expensive treatments which the ordinary Pakistani may not be able to afford.
Published in Dawn, May 28th, 2016