L AHORE: The Punjab government’s lifesaving mega Chronic Myeloid Leukemia (CML) programme suffered a major setback due to three-month-long disruption in distribution of cancer drugs to the critical patients in five designated centres across the province.
As many as 5,000 blood cancer patients were registered under the CML programme to get four kinds of free-of-cost medicines from the centres set up at Mayo Hospital,Lahore, Jinnah Hospital, Lahore, Nishtar Hospital, Multan, Benazir Bhutto Hospital, Rawalpindi and Allied Hospital, Faisalabad.
As per the programme, the CML patients have been collecting medicines from these hospitals every month to fight blood cancer.
The medicines had not been reportedly provided to them for the last three months or so, putting lives of many of them at risk.
The patients were left with no choice but to purchase the expensive drugs from the open market where they too were reported in short supply.
Following the grave situation, most of the patients were bearing additional expenses.
According to the medical experts, one of the cancer drugs Nilotinib is a targeted therapy used for specific CML patients and often requires long-term treatment under specialist supervision.
They warned that any prolonged disruption can create serious problems forpatients as most of them cannot afford repeated purchases from the market due to the high cost.
An official privy to the information said CML treatment programme had been launched during the tenure of then chief minister Shahbaz Sharif in 2014.
Since then, he said, it was distributing free cancer drugs to the patients at the registered centres.
The official said the programme had been facing supply disruption in the past but for a brief period of a few weeks or so.
In September 2019, the cancer patients had suspended the Metro Bus service at Ferozpur Road, Lahore, to protest supply disruption during the tenure of the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) government in Punjab.
The PML-N had at that time strongly condemned the PTI government for causing grave inconvenience to the patients, demanding immediate provision of the cancer drugs.
In the starting phase of the programme,the Jinnah Hospital and then the Mayo Hospital were authorised to purchase the drugs through competitive bidding for the five centres.
Later, the Specialised Healthcare & Medical Education Department took the responsibility for the centralised procurement of the drugs.
This time, the official said, the severe shortage of the drugs lasted for more than three months or so, due to delay in the bidding process.
He added that the patients were facing growing uncertainty following the emerging reports that the tender process may take more time.
However, Punjab Health Minister Khwaja Salman Rafique said the provincial health authorities were fully aware of the situation and struggling hard to make all the drugs available at the centres.
Explaining the reason behind the disruption, he said around a year back, thehealth department had held a meeting with the leading oncologists of the province.
During the detailed deliberations, the senior oncologists had recommended to the provincial government to revise the prescribed cancer medicines by taking them from four to 27.
He said the health department held a series of meetings and initiated a central procurement process for many drugs while some were available in the government stock.
In a recent meeting held the other day, the health authorities had allowed the notified hospitals to make Local Purchase (LP) for the provision of the drugs to the patients in order to meet the shortage as a stop-gap arrangement.
Salman Rafique expressed the hope that the matter would be resolved very soon and the patients would start getting cancer drugs from the five centres.