9,000 to get free medicines free of cost

Government will bear around 10% of the total cost which equals Rs4.40b

LAHORE: The Health Department signed an agreement with NOVARTIS, a Swiss Pharmaceutical company, to provide free of cost medicines to 9,000 cancer patients on Thursday.

In total, medicines worth Rs44 billion would be distributed among needy cancer patients over the course of the next five years. Punjab Government would bear around 10% of the total cost which equaled to Rs4.40 billion, whereas the company would bear the major load of 39.6 billion.



The Punjab Government was also in collaboration with NOVARTIS since 2014to run a similar project for 3,000 patients with two kinds of cancer. However, with this agreement, the government would provide medicines for seven types of cancer.

These free of cost medicines were available from a hospital from Lahore and Multan since 2014; however, after this agreement, these free of cost medicines would also be available from a hospital at Rahim Yar Khan and Lahore. The government revealed that the survival rate of patients under this project was 90%.

Punjab Chief Minister Shehbaz Sharif said that the government had taken a big jump from 3,000 to 9,000 patients in this project. He said that they were using all available resources in the health sector in Punjab to accomplish the task.



Addressing the ceremony, Sharif said that loot of billions of rupees was the reason behind lack of proper health care facilities of masses. He said that the government was also trying to prevent cancer with water treatment projects. The government was also ensuring to eradicate fake and spurious medicines from the open market, he added. He said that regulation in food industry brought by the authority was another pre-emptive measure against cancer.

Giving details of the project, he said 38% patients who were benefiting from the project were house wives whereas 12% were workers.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 13^th, 2017.