KARACHI, Dec 16: The Pakistan Medical Association expressing its concern over what it has described as an alarming surge in hepatitis cases has warned that if immediate steps are not taken the country may face serious consequences not only in the health sector but also in the social and economic sectors.

The PMA has said that the government should earmark funds and grants in proportion to the number of hepatitis patients besides distributing this grant and drugs to those districts of the interior of Sindh where hepatitis is becoming an epidemic. The association claimed that seven from every 100 women brought to gynaecology wards were found suffering from hepatitis. It was pointed out that the number of people suffering from hepatitis B and C in the interior of the province was increasing with each passing day.

PMA Central General Secretary Dr Habibur Rahman Soomro criticised the government over the non-availability of hepatitis treatment drugs in government-run hospitals, saying that the medicines were provided to hospitals only for three months under the Prime Minister National Programme for Hepatitis Control and Prevention.

He said that the government announced various welfare programmes to gain public sympathy without looking their planning aspect and as a result most such initiatives failed. He questioned how the government expected doctors to treat hepatitis patients if the required medicines were unavailable.

Criticising distribution formula for the provision of free drugs to government hospitals, he said half of medicines were provided to hospitals in major cities while the rest were supplied to rural areas where more hepatitis patients dwell.

“Ninety per cent patients can be easily treated at rural and primary health centres if they are provided required medicines,” he claimed, adding that presently 60 per cent patients visiting hospitals in major cities belonged to the interior of Sindh.

Dr Sommro said a large number of patients of rural areas have to visit hospitals in big cities just because the bureaucracy had set a formula of 50 per cent medicine supply to big hospitals in big cities and 50 per cent to rural and primary health centres overlooking the fact that majority of hepatitis patients lived in rural areas.

Due to non-availability of the medicines at major hospitals in the city, when doctors failed to provide medicines to patients who had come from rural areas, their attendants sometimes even beat up doctors and smash windowpanes and furniture of the hospitals, he added.

In reply to a question, he said some 70 per cent of the provincial health budget was spent on salaries to doctors and paramedics and the remaining 30 per cent could not meet the demands of required medicines. He stressed the need to increase the budget for provision of drugs to the hospitals.

He was of the view that official grants earmarked for elimination of hepatitis and other diseases lacked transparency. He said only 20 per cent of the total fund earmarked by the government for elimination of any disease benefited patients while bureaucrats and other officials reportedly took the lion’s share. —PPI