PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government has included kidney transplantation in Sehat Sahulat Programme as the first beneficiary of the scheme underwent a surgery at a private hospital two days ago.

The SSP was started in January 2017 to provide free treatment services to 1.8 million deserving patients in the province. The number of entitled families was raised to 2.4 million in 2018 under which about 170,000 patients have been treated at public and private hospitals so far.

Most of the beneficiaries are cardiac patients, who have been using medicines for survival because they don’t have the money to undergo costly procedures.

First beneficiary of the scheme underwent surgery two days ago

So far, more than Rs4 billion has been spent on the treatment of the people holding Sehat Insaf Card in 100 public and private hospitals designated by the government. The government has announced extending the SSP to the whole province from July 1 this year.

Seerat Nigar, 28, had damaged kidneys for the past 18 months due to chronic glomerulonephritis, a kidney ailment, which led to high blood pressure and renal failure. She received medication until March 2019 but later her condition deteriorated and doctors put her on dialysis.

Meanwhile, she was prepared for kidney transplant. She was entitled to get free treatment as her mother was holder of the Sehat Insaf Card. One card enables eight members of the same family to get free of charge treatment.

Her brother Saqibur Rehman, 24, donated his kidney to her. She underwent kidney transplant at North West General Hospital on Sunday where she is recovering rapidly.

Prof Asif Malik, the administrator of KP Medical Transplant Regulatory Authority, was also part of the team that performed the transplant.

Health officials said that Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, which pioneered the SSP, lately included heart and then kidney transplant in the programme that would benefit the people to get expensive treatment free of cost.

The province has enforced Medical Transplant Regulatory Authority Act due to which about 12 people have undergone procedures at Institute of Kidney Diseases. Most of the patients are in stable conditions.

Officials said that the decision to include renal transplantation in SSP would benefit more patients, who were not able to bear the expenses of the operation. The federal government has replicated the programme in other provinces to serve the poor people and efforts were afoot to further streamline it.

The MTRA has recognised IKD, Rehman Medical Institute (RMI) and North West General Hospital for kidney transplant whereas a request was being considered to approve Combined Military Hospital Peshawar for the same. The RMI has also been allowed to do liver transplants.

The MTRA has enabled the doctors to restore eyesight of the people as the Pakistani doctors send free corneas from abroad that are planted to the poor people, blinded by trauma or cylinder blast, at Khyber Teaching Hospital, Lady Reading Hospital and Hayatabad Medical Complex.

Authorities are trying to establish regional offices of MTRA to help the district hospitals to begin organ transplants but lack of funds and staff has been hampering the programme to extend activities.

Published in Dawn, May 31st, 2019