NAWABSHAH, March 19: The district government of Nawabshah is providing maximum health facilities to the people and making all-out efforts to provide modern health facilities to them. This was stated by District Nazim Faryal Talpur while speaking at the handing over ceremony of possession of a plot for the Nawabshah Institute of Nuclear Medicine and Radiotherapy to the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission here on Saturday. She said that many projects, including that of a cadet college, had been taken back from Nawabshah but she had succeeded in getting the institute project approved by the PAEC with the support of the People’s Medical College and the revenue department.

She said that she was proud to be a sister of Asif Ali Zardari and added that Nawabshah is the birth place of Mr Zardari who had changed the look of the district by carrying out development works there. PACE director Khursheed Javed said that the commission had started working in 1961 with its first hospital in Karachi and added that at present 13 nuclear institutes were functioning under the PAEC and soon the figure would rise to 16 when its institutes in Gilgit, Gujranwala and Nawabshah would start functioning.

He said that the Nawabshah project would take at least three years to complete with an estimated cost of Rs500 million and the institute would initially treat 5,000 patients every month.

PMC principal Professor Ali Akbar Ghumro and former principal Professor Azam Hussain Yousufani said that cancer was curable and at least 150 cancer patients reported at the PMC Hospital every month and were referred either to Jamshoro or Karachi.

They said that most of the patients were either in third or last stage of the fatal disease and their treatment was difficult.

They said that a cancer patient felt no pain at initial stages of the disease began feeling pain in the last stage.

They said that the three kinds of treatments — surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy — would be available at the nuclear medicine institute where facilities of thallium, bone and brain scan would also be available.

They said that 10 acres of land had been purchased for the institute at the cost of Rs3.5 million out of which Rs3 million provided by the PMC which would be returned by the Sindh government.

They said that Rs500,000 had been provided by the district government.