KARACHI, April 30: Prof. Masood Hameed Khan, Vice Chancellor of Dow University of Health Sciences, here on Friday urged the private and public sector to make joint efforts for establishing more bone-marrow transplantation units to facilitate majority of thalassaemia patients in the country.

He was speaking at the inauguration of a BMT unit at the Aga Khan University Hospital. This is the third BMTU opened in Pakistan, while two other units are functioning at Bismillah Taqee Institute of Health Sciences and Blood Diseases Centre and at Armed Forces Medical Hospital, Rawalpindi.

The unit will offer services to benign and malignant disorders, like aplastic anaemia, lymphoma, leukemia and thalassemia major patients. The VC said that five to eight per cent population of Pakistan had Thalassemia Minor which was in addition to 4,000 new patients of thalassaemia major every year.

Direct treatment cost of this disease in Pakistan was Rs1.4 million, in India Rs0.4 million, in UK Rs4-5 million, in US Rs8-9 million, he added. "Because of its high treatment cost, we see thousands of people dying in front of our eyes, but we cannot do anything for them unless this treatment is provided to them in Pakistan with low cost," he said.

He said: "We cannot only save foreign exchange, but also time and money of people by establishing more BMTUs in Pakistan." Three BMTUs were not sufficient to a large population of the country, so there was a need to establish more units, he added.

Prof. Masood Hameed called for legislation to reduce the treatment cost and said that the DUHS was preparing recommendations to provincial assembly about thalassemia. He also urged the medical community to play their role in containing irrational use of antibiotics and avert by all means any unnecessary exposure to radioactive rays.

About the cost of BMT in Pakistan, he said this may be comparatively low, but is still was largely non-affordable for a vast majority of patients and that policy-makers need to adopt a realistic attitude in bringing down the same through cut in the cost of relevant outlay.

Prof. Masood Hameed referred to the practice in India where there happen to be 14 BMT units, while expenses and the cost of each bone-marrow transplant in India comes to Rs 200,000 to Rs 300,000.

According to him, it was due to realisation on the part of Indian policy-makers that without any compromise in quality, the cost of medicines, as well as medication there, were considerably low.

Director-General and CEO, AKU, Nadeem Mustafa Khan said that the establishment of BMTU was a milestone and collective effort of university to reach community. He hoped that the AKU would also establish transplant units for renal, lever and other diseases soon.

Dean Medical College, AKU, Prof. Mohammad Khurshid said that experts should help each other to establish more transplant units in the country and now infrastructure already exists for this purpose.

Chairman, Dept. of Medicine, AKU, Prof. Wasim Jafri, said that Pakistanis were facing immense health care problems and they needed prevention from diseases. "Diseases could happen with poor and wealthy without any discrimination and we need help from all corners to facilitate patients," he said and urged the philanthropists to help poor patients.

He said that they had strongly recommended for the establishment of more transplant units for different diseases to the AKU high-ups. Director Nursing Services, AKUSON, Khurshid Khowaja explained about the BMTU and its functions.

Later, scientific session was held in which Dr. David Dennison of Sultan Quboos University, Oman; Dr. Syed Saad Akhtar of King Faisal Specialist Hospital, Saudi Arabia; Dr. Hemant Malhotra of SMS Medical College and Hospital, Jaipur, India; Dr. Ali Bilgrami of University of Connecticut, US; Dr. Tahir Shamsi of Bismillah Taqee Institute of Blood Diseases, Karachi; Dr. Mehebood Basade of Jaslok Hospital and Research Centre, Mumbai, India; and Maj-Gen Masood Anwar of Commandant AFIP, Rawalpindi, presented their presentations about bone marrow transplantation through different topics. -PPI