LARKANA, May 19: The treatment of 460 Hepatitis B patients registered under the prime minister’s programme with the Chandka Medical College Hospital (CMCH), Larkana, has come to a halt because of the non-availability of medicines.

This was disclosed Dr Syed Mehboob Shah, CMCH Medical Superintendent (MS), at a seminar arranged jointly by the hospital and the PM’s programme on Saturday.

The seminar was presided over by District Nazim Larkana Mohammad Arijo.

Asking the provincial coordinator of the programme for help, Dr Shah said that the problem was such that patients seeking treatment even came to his home.

Dr Zulfikar Gorar, the provincial coordinator of PM’s Hepatitis B programme for Sindh, promised that medicines would be made available within a week, since the purchase process was difficult.

Dr Shah said that the hospital receives 20 to 30 hepatitis patients every day. According to Dr Gorar, there are 6 million Hepatitis B and 7.5 million Hepatitis C patients in the country and these numbers are increasing alarmingly fast. The Larkana, Qambar-Shahdadkot and Shikarpur districts have the highest incidence of the Hepatitis Delta Virus, he added. Recent studies have concluded that health workers are more likely to be infected by Hepatitis B, and each patient infects at least three other people. Dr Gorar said that the only solution lay in mass vaccinations.

Head of the department of medicine CMCH Professor Wazir Mohammad Sheikh said that during 2006, 681 Hepatitis B patients had been admitted to his ward alone, of which 266 had cirrhosis of the liver. Professor Rafia Baloch, head of the department of gynaecology CMCH, stressed the need to create awareness about this virus among mothers, since prevention was the only way to combat this disease.

District Nazim Arijo and Taluka Nazim Larkana Qurban Abbasi announced that 20 per cent of the next financial year’s budget would be reserved for the treatment of the district’s hepatitis and tuberculosis patients and asked health officials to submit budgetary proposals in this regard. The officials said that a full-fledged angiography unit was nearing completion in the Sachal Sarmast housing colony, and instruments worth Rs. 60 million had been installed there. The unit will be functional within a couple of months, they stated, and the charges will not be higher than Rs. 15,000 per session, which costs Rs 50,000 in private sectors.

An awareness walk was also held on the occasion, and participants included District Nazim Arijo, the principal of the CMCH Professor Surgeon Sikandar Sheikh, MS CMCH Dr Shah and various doctors, paramedics and NGO representatives.