LAHORE: Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif has announced provision of free-of-cost medicines to cancer patients, besides a cancer hospital project for Lahore, pledging his government would not leave any one suffering from the fatal disease unattended because of poverty.

Punjab government will spend Rs1.5 billion on the provision of free cancer medicines under a phased programme.

Addressing a function held in connection with the World Cancer Day at a local hotel on Tuesday, the chief minister said cancer patients and their families had to undergo a lot of pain and sufferings and the government would make its best efforts to ensure that no deserving cancer patient remains deprived of medicines due to poverty. Announcing the cancer hospital project, to be executed with cooperation of a pharmaceutical firm, he said Punjab government would provide land and machinery for the facility. He directed the health authorities and medical experts to present recommendations for the project on which immediate progress would be made by the government.

He said that he himself had been a cancer patient but due to the grace of Allah Almighty and the prayers of people, he had recovered. He said that he firmly believed that God gave him a new life only to serve the masses and ailing humanity.

Narrating his personal experience as a cancer patient for the first time, Shahbaz Sharif said that in 2003, when he was in Jaddah, a tumor was detected in his stomach. He said an Egyptian doctor after his check-up performed surgery and he was shifted to his house next day. But the analysis of tumor revealed it was malignant, he added.

Shahbaz Sharif said that he was taken to a New York hospital where the doctors expressed surprise that the surgery had been performed without biopsy. He said that he had to undergo another surgery.

He said that he had also planned a cancer hospital in the province during his last tenure but he was told it was not practicable as it involved a lot of expenditure.

He said for the affluent and the rich, cancer treatment was no problem but there was a need to think of the common man. He said it was time to remove the flaws in the existing healthcare system and make the poor and deserving patients feel that they had an equal right to Pakistan.