Expert for alternative system to help cancer patients in Afghanistan
PESHAWAR: An expert has called for development of alternative support system to help cancer patients in Afghanistan where decades-long conflict has shattered healthcare infrastructure.
Addressing an Iftar dinner on Wednesday night, Dr Mohammed Aasim Yusuf, chief medical officer of Shaukat Khanum Memorial Cancer Hospital and Research Centre, said that policymakers needed to develop and support alternative systems and structures to provide post-conflict domestic and cross-border cancer care to patients in Afghanistan.
He said that a total of 113,384 cancer patients were registered with SKMCH&RC for treatment between December 1995 and June 2022. Among those patients, 7,468 (6.6 per cent) were Afghan nationals, he added.
“Afghanistan has been facing long conflict, which has degraded its health infrastructure due to which Afghans seek cancer treatment in Pakistan’s tertiary care cancer institutions,” said Dr Aasim.
Dr Aasim says conflict has shattered healthcare infrastructure in the neighbouring country
He said that a total of 6,370 Afghan patients had undergone cancer care since 1995 including 57 per cent male. Thirty per cent of those patients belonged to Kabul and Nangarhar provinces of Afghanistan and 56pc of them came to the hospital with stage three or four of the disease, he said.
“About 34pc of adult patients have achieved a complete response to treatment, but more than half of all patients have since been lost to follow-up. Children generally have better outcomes, with 43pc showing a complete response to treatment,” he said.
Dr Aasim said that the journey for those cancer patients remained long and difficult and the inability to ensure follow-up in so many remains frustrating for both patients and providers.
Following the invasion of Afghanistan by the former USSR in 1979, millions of people from Afghanistan crossed the border to seek refuge in Pakistan, which hosted more than 3.3 million people.
He said that SKMCH & RC was set up in Lahore in 1994 and the intake mechanism for cancer patients was based on a diagnosis of the disease without regard to financial status, ethnicity or nationality of a patient.
He said that nearly 30pc of all patients, who were checked by doctors in Lahore belonged Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, bordering Afghanistan. He added that recognising the need for a specialised tertiary care cancer hospital in KP, a second SKMCH&RC was established in Peshawar in 2015.
Dr Aasim said that an estimated 180,000 new cancer patients diagnosed each year in Pakistan. “A significant proportion of the patients, who access these facilities, are Afghans or Pakistani Pashto-speaking people from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa,” he added.
He said that they could not treat all the cancer patients, who visited SKMCH&RC so the patients were accepted on the basis of diagnosis and stage of the disease.
“The intention is to accept those patients, who are most likely curable. Nonetheless, once patients are accepted for treatment, they are eligible for all treatments available even when their disease progresses, regardless of their ability to pay and irrespective of their nationality or ethnicity,” he added.
Published in Dawn, April 7th, 2023