PESHAWAR, Sept 6: The health department has planned to launch awareness campaign against thalassaemia to save children from the blood disease, said an official.

He said that around 20,000 children suffered from thalassaemia in the NWFP, and about 8,000 more join them every year. About 70 per cent of the cases were because of marriages between cousins, which could be discouraged through awareness campaign, he added.

The official, while talking to Dawn, said that patients suffered immensely in the wake of non-availability of treatment facilities at the public sector hospitals. Subsequently, he said, they visited private hospitals, run by NGOs, from where they contracted numerous infections, such as hepatitis B and C and even HIV/AIDS, citing lack of screening facilities in those outfits.

The provincial government has allocated Rs30 million for the awareness campaign, he added. A committee headed by Paediatrician Prof Dr Abdul Hameed has been constituted with Haematologist Prof Dr Fazle Raziq as its member to devise strategies for the utilization of the fund to help arrest the disease, he said.

Thalassaemia is an hereditary blood disease and the affected children need blood transfusion every three to six months, Dr Hameed said, adding that as the children grow, they needed blood on monthly and then on weekly basis.

"We have a culture of intra-family marriages, due to which 50 per cent of the new-born babies turned out to be thalassaemic," he said. Dr Hameed said that they were planning to involve doctors, journalists, opinion makers and parents of the affected children in the campaign against the disease.