The Supreme Court of Pakistan. PHOTO: AFP
A two-judge bench, headed by Justice Ejaz Afzal, took up a six-year-old constitutional petition, filed by a Tariq Asad advocate, seeking restoration of free treatment for ARF patients.
The petitioner contended that in 1999, the federal government had announced free dialysis facility to ARF patients. However, the facility was suspended following the toppling of the government by then army chief General Pervez Musharraf.
Following the coup, the registration of the patients was reduced from 8,000 to 3,000 by the end of 2000 when free treatment was suspended. The treatment facility utilised by 5,000 patients was discontinued and resultantly the patients died, the petition said.
It said the government later restarted the scheme as ‘National Dialysis Treatment Scheme’ but the scheme could not render any substantial help to the poor ARF patients nor any positive steps was taken to create funds for free treatment.
The petition said the cost of dialysis and other expenses – like tests, medicines and transport expenses – incurred on the ARF treatment were beyond the reach of common Pakistanis. It requested the bench constitute a commission to probe into the matter and find out why the scheme was suspended and what were the causes of its failure.
On Friday, Punjab’s Additional Advocate General (AAG) Razaq A Mirza submitted a report before the bench, stating that the chief minister has already taken an initiative to provide free dialysis facilities at all districts of the province.
The report said the Punjab government has provided dialysis facilities at all teaching and DHQ level hospitals and established dialysis centres at all DHQs and tertiary care hospitals. “Dialysis services are being provided free of cost to all patients and there are computerised waiting lists at all the centres for registering the patients and maintaining a database,” the report claimed.
The report said Punjab earmarked Rs540 million during the fiscal year 2007-08 to meet the recurring expenditure for provision of dialysis facilities at all the hospitals. “Same amount was allocated in 2009-10 as well,” it added.
Sindh’s AAG Shafi Chandio also appeared before the bench and said Dr Adeeb Rizvi institute in Sindh is providing free dialysis facility to kidney patients. He claimed that 5,000 patients are getting free dialysis facilities in 13 units of the province.
The federal, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan requested the court for more time to submit their reports. The court ordered them to submit their reports by the next hearing as it adjourned the case for two weeks.
Published in The Express Tribune, January 24th, 2015.
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