DADU, Aug 28: Shama Chandio does not shed tears any more, her eyes having dried up helplessly watching her loved ones dying one after the other over the past four years. She lost her husband Sher Mohammad, followed by her father-in-law Zawar Chandio, brother-in-law Rajib and then her son Koro to hepatitis B and C, the killer disease caused by infected blood.

But her ordeal was not over yet. The remaining four members of her family have contracted the same killer disease and she is fated to see them lowered in graves if something is not done to bring them back from the brink of death.

Unfortunately, she is not suffering alone. There are hundreds more. A local doctor says 1,200 out of the total 1,500 inhabitants of Ms Shama’s village, Sivo Chandio village of Khairpur Nathan Shah taluka, are hepatitis patients.

Villagers told this reporter that 125 people had died of the disease over the past four years because the poor were unable to afford the expensive treatment.

A villager, Mai Biban, wife of Alauddin Chandio, whose six family members including her husband and son had died of the disease, said that her son, grandson, and two sisters-in-law had the same disease.

Mai said that remaining members of the family would soon die without treatment and appealed to the government to send doctors to her village. The patients were lying in make-shift houses because their poor relatives could not afford to move them to hospitals, she said.

Former project director of the Expanded Programme of Immunisation, Sindh, Dr Khadim Hussain Lakhiar, who had also been an EDO of health and belongs to Lakhiar village, a kilometre from the affected Sivo Chandio village, visits the patients on a regular basis.

He confirmed the presence of hepatitis patients in the village and blamed quacks, unqualified dentists, medical practitioners, inexperienced doctors and reuse of used syringes for the spread of hepatitis to such an alarming level. The government should register cases against all the quacks and incompetent doctors, he said.

Abdul Ghani Chandio, former councillor of the village, said that the disease first surfaced in the village about ten years ago but the villagers did not take it seriously and the disease continued to spread its tentacles silently.

He believed that at least four of eight persons in each house were infected with the disease and complained that its tests and treatment were too expensive for the poor villagers.

The vice-chancellor of the Liaquat University of Medical and Health Sciences said that some districts of the province, including Dadu, Jamshoro, Tando Allahyar and Sanghar, had 30 per cent prevalence of hepatitis.

He admitted the treatment for the disease was expensive and advised people to take advantage of the molecular lab in LUMHS to get hepatitis B and C tests done at nominal charges.

The director general of Health Services Sindh, Dr Hadi Bux Jatoi, said that there were approximately 1.5 million cases of hepatitis B and 1.75 million of hepatitis C in Sindh and his department was trying to provide treatment to all the patients.

The federal government had launched a drive under the Prime Minister Program in August 2005 to control hepatitis B and C, but the programme’s launch in Sindh was delayed by a year. It kicked off in Aug 2006 in 11 districts of the province, he said.

The EDO of health, Dr Dhani Bux Thebo, admitted the disease was common in the district but he was unaware of the alarming number of hepatitis patients in the Sivo Chandio village.

URS: Thousands of devotees of Hazrat Qalandar Lal Shahbaz have started arriving in Sehwan Sharif to attend the 755th annual Urs of the Sufi saint which will commence on Sept 1.

The devotees have rented rooms and houses for Rs10,000 to 15,000 in Kingri Mohalla, Makran Siddique, Bodalo Bahar while many of them erected tents at Lal Bagh and other places in Sehwan.

Majority of the devotees have arrived from Punjab and Balochistan.