- AFP (File Photo)

PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government has decided to introduce online system for the treatment of patients suffering from hepatitis.

“The system is aimed at streamlining the hepatitis control programme and ensuring timely treatment of patients,” Health Director-General Dr Sharif Ahmad Khan told Dawn.

He said that government had allocated Rs80 million for free treatment of the hepatitis patients for which they needed online system to provide diagnostic and treatment facilities to patients on need basis.Dr Sharif said that the online system would be used to compile data of patients and make treatment arrangements accordingly.

“All the patients don’t need injections owing to which we have decided that all the suspected would be asked to visit designated treatment centres in their respective districts to undergo certain tests and receive treatment accordingly,” he added.

The health director-general said that 45 centres had been designated throughout the province where patients would be provided with free diagnostic and treatment facilities. He said that introduction of online system would make the treatment programme more transparent and the deserving patients would receive timely treatment.

Last week a meeting of the medical superintendents of the district headquarters hospitals and in-charge of the hepatitis treatment centres was held in the directorate-general health services wherein it was decided to make the process of eligibility of the patients for the free treatment so that more patients could benefit from the programme.

“We are also facing problems in getting more patients because people don’t know about the free treatment programme,” he said. Earlier, free treatment was only extended to the patients possessing Zakat certificate but recently it was decided to provide free treatment to all the patients irrespective of their financial positions, Dr Sharif said.

For the past several years, the provincial health department had been facing an uphill task of identifying patients as the allocated amount was lapsed in the process.

“We want to utilise the amount allocated for the treatment of hepatitis patients this year,” he said.

Citing several studies conducted at the premier health institutes of the country, he said that three to five per cent population suffered from hepatitis B while five to six per cent had hepatitis C in the province. Majority of the patients belonged to poor families and couldn’t afford the costly diagnosis and treatment, he said.

The health director-general said that the province had been providing free treatment to 4,341 patients with hepatic C and 1,000 patients with hepatitis B from the provincial hepatitis control programme for the past three years while 1,2815 patients were being treated from Benazir Health Support Fund.

About 16,000 patients had been treated from the funds provided by the National Hepatitis Control Programme, he said, adding that now all the programmes had been merged to streamline the affairs and ensure that the patients get early treatment.

“The online system will become operational within a month after which the patients would start getting treatment from the day they are diagnosed positive for any type of hepatitis,” Dr Sharif said.

However, he said that priority would be accorded to young people in provision of free treatment.