PESHAWAR: The health department has sought the allocation of half of the beds at the Bone Marrow Transplant Centre of Islamabad’s Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences for its residents, insisting 90 per cent of the countrywide cases of blood disorders are reported in the province.

It also claims that these minor patients of thalassaemia, hemophilia and leukemia are too poor to afford the costly treatment.

Sources told Dawn that the health department received a letter from the federal health services ministry in Sept last year seeking comments on the PC-I developed for the PIMS Bone Marrow Transplant Centre.

Health dept insists 90pc of countrywide blood disorder cases reported in province

However, the department replied in Dec insisting there is no need to file comments on the PC-I as the centre is already functional.

It also demanded the allocation of half of the beds at the centre claiming the country’s 90 per cent of the sufferers of blood disorders live in the province, including tribal districts formerly called Fata.

The department said bone marrow transplantation was the only cure to thalassaemia but that was unaffordable for the local poor patients.

It asked the health services ministry to include doctors, paramedics and nurses from the province in its training programmes on blood disorders to help manage such patients in the province.

In 2012, the health department had closed down the Prevention of Thalassaemia Major programme, the first of its kind in the country launched in 2005.

Now as there are no arrangements for their treatment at government centres in the province, the patients of blood disorders depend on the services offered by private and charity-based blood centres.

The officials said the province’s eight per cent residents suffered from Thalassaemia minor and therefore, their children were vulnerable to Thalassaemia Major.

They proposed the continuous public awareness as a corrective measure.

In the letter, the health department also demanded the establishment of special centres in Bannu, Abbottabad, Malakand, Peshawar and Dera Ismail Khan to offer free screening for blood disorders in the local population.

It identified local hematologists to be declared focal persons to maintain a liaison with the federal health ministry on ways and means to prevent and control blood disorders in the province.

The officials called for the control of childhood problems through public awareness saying the province is facing the commonest genetic hemoglobin disorder, which has no treatment.

They said such patients continued to suffer as they relied on blood transfusion only and ultimately died for lacking money to undergo bone marrow transplantation.

The officials said the PIMS Bone Marrow Transplant Centre was established in 2010 under the Pakistan-Italy Swap Debt Agreement but the Italian government later converted that loan into a grant.

They said after 18th Amendment to the Constitution was enforced, the province had the right to send patients to the PIMS BMTC to avail themselves of the required treatment.

The officials said the federal health ministry had yet to respond to the health department’s demands.

Published in Dawn, January 13th, 2019