PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa health department is awaiting approval of prime minister for launching a three-month treatment regime for hepatitis C patients, according to officials.

They said that a summary was sent to the office of prime minister to get approval for Daclatasavir tablet that was used worldwide for treatment of hepatitis C patients successfully.

Drug Regulatory Authority Pakistan has put up the file through Ministry of National Health Services, Regulations and Coordination to prime minister. “The summary is likely to get approved before June,” said officials.

Experts say use of Daclatasavir tablet will reduce period of treatment to three months

According to physicians, the new treatment course will consist of three months during which the patients, using the pills, will undergo PCR test every month. About eight local pharmaceutical companies have started manufacturing the tablet, the price of which would range from Rs6,000 to Rs8,000.

The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa health department, which started first oral drug Sofosbuvir in March this year, is awaiting the federal government’s response to launch the new pills to cut the duration of treatment from six months to three months.

Physicians said that the process of rate contracting with the relevant manufacturers had already been completed and it was matter of weeks to allow its marketing. The patients would be prescribed Daclatasavir tablets in combination with Sofosbuvir initially, they said. Some companies have also planned to manufacture a single pill with combination of the two oral tablets to facilitate patients. Physicians said that oral medication for hepatitis C benefited patients as it had lesser side effects as compared to interferon injections. With Sofosbuvir, the patients were being given two other tablets to enhance its efficacy, they said.

The experts said that there was a lot of loss of blood during administration of injections due to which doctors were prescribing oral drugs to the patients.

Dr Kalimullah Khan of the Prime Minister’s Programme for Control and Prevention of Hepatitis told Dawn that they had found Sofosbuvir very effective as it enabled the patients to complete treatment in six months with 98 per cent efficacy rate.

“Now, we are waiting for approval of prime minister to purchase the new drugs for free provision to the patients across the province,” he said. He added that they got money to purchase the drugs for the patients at government-run hospitals.

The doctors said that prevalence rate of hepatitis B in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa was two per cent while that of hepatitis C was five per cent. They said that it was possible to provide free medication to the existing patients but prevention about the viral infection was a daunting challenge for the government.

“We need to have infection control committees at the hospitals so that normal people can be saved from the disease. There are dental clinics in rural and urban areas that are spreading hepatitis among the people through repeated use of instruments,” said a senior physician.

He said that drive should be launched against those blood banks, clinics, hospitals and laboratories that were involved in malpractices. He added that barber shops and piercing of ear and nose in market by unqualified people should be checked to put brakes on the blood-borne ailments.

Published in Dawn, May 22nd, 2017