PESHAWAR, Aug 28: The federal government has instructed the NWFP health department to launch free treatment programme for hepatitis patients from its own resources.

“Only deserving patients, who were already enlisted for zakat (charity) by the respective committees, will be entitled to undergo free treatment under the programme,” sources told Dawn here on Thursday.

According to officials, under the Prime Minister’s Programme for Control and Prevention of Hepatitis, launched in 2005, it had been agreed that the provinces would get free injections and tablets for hepatitis patients for one year, after which each province would launch its own treatment programmes. Since treatment of the disease was expensive, therefore, Rs2.8 billion was reserved for the five-year programme.

The officials said that all provinces, except the NWFP, had started their own treatment programmes to supplement the federal government.

In Sindh, Punjab and Balochistan huge funds had been poured into the treatment programme.

The former Frontier government had also allocated Rs26 million to a separate programme for prevention of hepatitis but that was largely spent on the awareness campaign.

The federal ministry of health, two weeks ago, directed the provincial health department to allocate good amount for treatment and prepare a PC-1 at the earliest, they said, adding that the provincial government had already shown its willingness to give sufficient funds to stem the tide of hepatitis.

“We have started work on preparation of the PC-1, according to the federal government’s guidelines,” said an official and added that after the approval of the programme, free treatment of hepatitis patients at provincial level would get underway in the designated public sector hospitals.

It would take hardly one month for the health department to get approved the PC-1 from the federal government and start programmes.

They said that special committees comprising doctors, elected members and representatives of social welfare and zakat departments were already in place that would determine the eligibility of the patients applying for free treatment.

Officials said the Prime Minister’s Programme for Control and Prevention of Hepatitis would continue assisting the province to spread messages about preventive measures among the people.

The federal government would allocate 14 per cent of the total resources to the NWFP, bulk of which would go to installation of incinerators and water purification plants, besides establishment of waste management systems at hospitals and scaling up awareness regarding importance of hygiene and clean drinking water among the population.