PESHAWAR, Jan 14: The Prime Minister's Hepatitis Control Programme has helped improve blood transfusion services and checked spread of the disease at the provincial and district levels.

"Without improving the laboratory services and implementing the safe blood transfusion act, it is difficult to stem the tide of hepatitis," Dr Sharif Ahmed, manager of the programme told Dawn.

"About 250 studies on the disease show that the country has 3.4 per cent hepatitis B and 5-6 per cent Hepatitis C patients," he said.

Dr Sharif said that health officials of the four provinces, Fata, Fana and AJK in a meeting in Islamabad on January 7-8 had been asked to prepare PC-1 for their respective areas regarding the provision of better diagnostic facilities for hepatitis. “Although the prime minister’s programme has provided diagnostic kits to health departments, there own PC-1s would enable them to continue their respective programmes on sustained basis and in accordance with their needs,” he added.

The programme manager said the meeting had also decided to provide training to doctors and technicians to improve the diagnostic and treatment services, besides the provision of chemicals and equipment.

Dr Sharif said that a PC-I was under process at the ministry of health aimed at collecting 49,000 blood samples from the people of various areas to know the magnitude of the hepatitis prevalence in the country. He said the federal government had also included drug addicts in the high-risk group for hepatitis.

"Health managers in the NWFP had been asked to provide data about 13 rehabilitation centres for drug addict and mentally-retarded patients to the government so that they could be vaccinated against hepatitis B," he added.

He said that during the five-year (2005-10) programme, a holistic approach had been adopted to utilise Rs2.59 billion to achieve the objective set forth by Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, who inaugurated the programme on Aug 29, 2006 but was started in January this year owing to the earthquake.

"If this is not controlled at this stage, half of the population will be cirrhotic in the next 15 years," he said and added: "Simple cure lies in vaccination against all four types of hepatitis, except C, which has no vaccine," he added.

He said that besides preventive measures, 48 incinerators had been installed in public sector hospitals, adding that 50 water purification plants were being installed in different cities to prevent the spread of hepatitis A and E.

Unlike hepatitis B and C, which were caused by blood, A and E were caused by the consumption of contaminated water, he said.

Dr Sharif said that under the programme, hepatitis C injections had been provided to more than 1,200 patients.