The spouse of Punjab Governor and Vice-Chair Sarwar Foundation (SF) Begum Parveen Sarwar has announced launching a free Hepatitis Pakistan campaign throughout the country.
“We pledge to do free testing and provide free medicines to 1 million people by 2021.”
On this occasion, she said that there are more than 12 million hepatitis patients in Pakistan. The only way to eradicate this disease is timely diagnosis and treatment. While talking to media representatives at Sarwar Foundation Secretariat on Saturday, Mrs Perveen Sarwar said that we have signed an MOU with the University of Health Sciences and we are working in collaboration with over 14 organisations for free hepatitis testing and provision of free medicines to hepatitis patients throughout Pakistan.
She further said that there are approximately 25 Crore Hepatitis patients in the world whereas almost 170 million people suffer from hepatitis C; hepatitis B and C take more than one million precious lives every year in the world.
In Pakistan, the situation is grim as Hepatitis claims around 325 lives daily in Pakistan. Mrs Perveen Sarwar said that more than 15 Million People in Pakistan suffer from Hepatitis B or C but what worrisome is that nearly 90% of Hepatitis stricken patients are unaware that they have this disease.
Due to this reason, mass testing is very important particularly in impoverished areas where people live below the poverty line and cannot afford to get themselves tested.
