KARACHI: The Sindh High Court on Wednesday directed the provincial authorities to establish a cancer authority under the supervision of doctors of the Sindh Institute of Urology and Transplantation (SIUT) and the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre (JPMC) who are dealing with patients of the life-threatening disease.

Justice Salahuddin Panhwar of the SHC in an office note said that as per the compliance reports filed by the district and sessions judges concerned through the member of the SHC’s inspection team and the director general for health, there were 176,714 cancer patients reported in the province during the last five years.

The JMPC sought immediate release of Rs600 million special grant from the provincial government for the treatment of such patients.

The judge observed that it was an alarming situation and required immediate response from the government and thus the province must set up a cancer authority under the supervision of doctors of the SIUT and JMPC who were dealing with thousands of cancer patients.

On Oct 9, the two-judge bench headed by Justice Panhwar had expressed serious resentment over the performance of police to curb the menace of gutka and mainpuri and asked Sindh Rangers to take action against the smugglers and manufacturers of such hazardous items and to assist the police to crack down on this menace.

The head of the JPMC cancer department had submitted that 18,614 cancer patients were treated at the hospital during the last five years and of them 9,453 were suffering from mouth cancer as betel nuts were also one of the factors causing cancer.

Missing children

Another bench of the SHC directed the police on Wednesday to make all possible efforts for the recovery of 16 missing children.

While hearing a petition about the missing children, the two-judge bench headed by Justice K.K. Agha said that as per the investigating officer, he was making efforts to locate the children, adding that 16 children were still missing and directed the IO to make all efforts to find them and come up with a detailed progress report on Nov 27.

Earlier, on a directive of the SHC, the police had registered 23 FIRs about the missing children at different police stations of the city. Later, seven of them had returned home.

Published in Dawn, October 24th, 2019