Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s Ministry of Health, in collaboration with the World Health Organization (WHO) and key partners, reaffirmed its commitment on Friday to intensify efforts in eliminating hepatitis C.
The renewed pledge aims to scale up prevention, testing, and treatment strategies to meet national and global health targets.The commitment was made to avert 850,000 deaths and 1.1 million new infections by 2050 under the umbrella of the Prime Minister’s National Programme for the Elimination of Hepatitis C.This was one of the objectives discussed during an event chaired by Federal Minister for Health Syed Mustafa Kamal as part of World Hepatitis Day commemorations. WHO and the Ministry of Health convened the national and international experts for a discussion.Kamal said, “This is a commitment. I, along with my entire team, will work day and night, and we will leave no stone unturned to achieve our target.”He said,” Millions of people are already affected, and many more are getting affected every single day. We must act now to save our people.”“The fight against hepatitis is not a job, but a passion, a commitment and a mission. We have to screen our population.”According to data presented during the event, the implementation of the Prime Minister Programme could save 150,000 lives and avoid 210,000 infections by 2030, preventing 90,000 liver cancer cases and 71,000 cirrhosis cases.This prevention will also save over the next five years 1.3 billion Pakistani rupees (PKR) (USD 4.6 million) in treatment and over PKR 2 billion (USD 7 million) in hospitalization costs, totaling savings of PKR 3.3 billion.WHO Representative in Pakistan Dr Dapeng Luo said, “Detecting and treating hepatitis is essential, but prevention is the key to end the disease.”He said, ” We will continue to partner with Pakistan to implement science-based approaches and adapt to the Pakistani context best practices and lessons learned from around the world.”With 10 million of the 50 million estimated cases worldwide, Pakistan has the heaviest burden of hepatitis C globally. It is estimated that, every year, 110,000 people are infected in the country as 62% due to unsafe medical injections (including blood transfusions) and 38% due to injection drug use.
