Lives of poor patients at stake

Rawalpindi: The lives of poor patients suffering from hepatitis C who are registered here with Holy Family Hospital for free medication has become much more miserable as the provincial Hepatitis Control Programme has stopped providing funds and medicines to the hospital.

The hepatitis C patients registered here at the HFH were being provided directly acting antivirals (DAAs) free of cost for treatment of the disease under the Punjab Hepatitis Control Programme however the Punjab government has stopped facilitating poor patients last month putting lives of patients undergoing treatment at stake.

The DAAs are oral drugs to be taken with or after meals having no serious side effects. These drugs have high rate of cure though these are much costly and almost unaffordable for majority of the patients undergoing treatment in public sector healthcare facilities. The DAAs including sofosbuvir, daclatasvir and velpatasvir have higher response rates in hepatitis C treatment. The drugs also have very well tolerability and negligible side effects while duration of treatment is as low as 12 weeks in majority of cases.

Due to unavailability of medicines and funds from the Punjab government, the HFH has to discontinue provision of medicines to the patients being facilitated at the hospital free of cost. Also the hospital has become unable to provide medicines free of cost to the patients being registered recently. I have been receiving medicines free of cost from the HFH for the last eight weeks but now the hospital staff has refused to provide medicines to me saying that they are not receiving medicines from the Punjab government, said Tasleem Kausar, aged 45 years. She said she was unable to afford medicines from open market and that was why she got registered with the HFH.

If the hospital does not provide medicines to me in a day or two, I would have no other option but to discontinue treatment, she said.

Another 56 year old female patient who was tested positive for hepatitis C through HCP Central PCR Lab in December and got eligible for having free of cost medicines from the hospital has not been given medicines so far. Principal Rawalpindi Medical College Professor Dr. Jahangir Sarwar Khan when contacted by ‘The News’ on Wednesday said the Punjab government has not been giving funds to the hospital for medicines of hepatitis C patients for nearly a month.

He said the hospital cannot arrange medicines on its own for the hepatitis C patients being facilitated at the HFH. He added the concerned department at the HFH has repeatedly requested the Punjab government to provide it medicines for the poor hepatitis C patients but it got no positive response as yet.