PESHAWA R: The hepatitis control programme has not been able to perform to a desired level owing to shortage of staff, sources say.

The provincial director-general health admits shortage of staf f but says that a new hepatitis centre is about to complete after which the programme would begin fullfledged activities.

At present, the Prime Minister Programme for Control and Prevention of Hepatitis that was devolved to the province after the passage of 18th Amendment, does not have enough staff to carry out activities to a desired level.

`The programme has been functioning with three people including its provincial manager, computer operator and an accountant through which it has been taking care of the entire province,` saidsources.

They said that the province was able to start oral medication for hepatitis treatment for the first time in the country that was followed by Punjab. The province of Punjab, which has three structures for dealing with primary, secondary and tertiary care services, is looking towards Khyber Pakhtunkhwa for its hepatitisrelated matters.

`Punjab has established branches of hepatitis programme at the district, division and provincial level but still follow the advice from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa owing to its innovative approaches,` said sources.

Lastyear,Khyber Pakhtunkhwa started six-month oral treatment regime for hepatitis C patients that was immediately followed by Punjab. This year, Punjab copied the three-month oral medication for hepatitis patients launched by Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

Despite shortage of staff, the programme has been performing well but sources say that they fall short of imitating many measuresthat are necessary to cope with the viral ailment.

Sources say that hepatitis medicines are not included in the Medicine Coordination Cell`s list, which has approved 400 drugs for the whole province and as a result the programmer`s officials purchase the drugs too. `It requires a lot of homework, coupled with newspapers advertisements and short-listing of the manufacturers to acquire the stock,` they adds.

Sources say that it is a cumbersome process to get medicines and then supply the same to the hospitals and 33 sentinel centres for hepatitis patients. To cope with workload, the programme has engaged two NGOs each in Kohat and Peshawar to carry out screening of patients and give free medicines to the people testing positive for the disease.

`It must vaccinate people for hepadds B free of cost but due to lack of staff, it has to request to district hospitals for the purpose.

Similarly, it must hold free screening camps through dif ferent hospitals to detect patients,` saidsources.

Despite non-availability of staf f, the programme has been holding medical camps in jails with cooperation of local authorities. It has also been holding sessions in schools to scale up awareness level of students regarding preventive measures as well as ensure hepatitis B vaccination of newborns in the hospitals.

A full-fledged programme would enable it to carry out ag gressive activities in the province where the hepatitis B is prevalent in 2 per cent and Cin5 per cent population.

`Under the programme, 12,000 patients received free treatment last year and as many were registered this year,` said sources. They said that a well-staf fed programme may reach to all the infected patients through holding screening camps. DG Health Dr Ayub Roz said that they were in the process of sanctioning new posts of specialist doctors and support staff for sixstorey building very soon that would pave the way for full-scale activities in the province.