In what could come as a boon to the cancer patients in districts where the National Programme for Prevention and Control of Cancer, Diabetes, Cardiovascular Diseases and Stroke (NPCDCS) is being implemented, the State Government has decided to bear all costs of the patients treated at the referral hospitals.
The entire costs of the patients referred to the Acharya Harihar Regional Cancer Centre (AHRCC) or respective medical college and hospitals (MCHs) __ transport, investigation, diagnostic services, drugs and treatment __ will be borne by the Government under the NPCDCS programme.
This will be continued till the infrastructure for providing proper treatment at the district level is readied and the centres are made functional. Corpus funds would be established at the AHRCC, MKCGMCH, Berhampur and VSSMCH, Burla to provide treatment and services free of cost to the patients referred to them.
The districts covered under the NPCDCS programme would be contributing funds for the corpus at the AHRCC and their respective MCHs. The NPCDCS is presently being implemented in five districts __ Nuapada, Koraput, Malkangiri, Nabarangpur and Balangir __ with plans to extend it to five more districts soon.
All the 30 districts are envisaged to be covered within the 12th Plan period. Each of the five districts will have to initially provide `4 lakh to the AHRCC, the main referral cancer hospital in the State, along with `20,000 to the MCH to which they are attached.
The corpus at the AHRCC will, thus, start off with `20 lakh and the MCH with `1 lakh each and the money expended will be refurbished in a continuous process.
“Cancer is a major component of the NPCDCS programme along with cardiovascular diseases and diabetes and it requires specialised treatment and handling. Provisioning treatment at the district level is risky unless every aspect from infrastructure and adequately trained doctors and paramedics is at hand. Daycare centres are being set up at the DHHs while training of doctors and paramedics is on. Till the time the district machinery is ready, patients will have to go to the referral hospitals”, State Nodal officer on NPCDCS and NPHCE Dr P K B Patnaik said.
Under NPCDCS, four-bedded daycare centres are to be opened to provide treatment, mainly chemotherapy, to the cancer patients. The objective is to spare the poor patients the trouble of having to travel long distances to the referral hospitals for regular sessions and incurring heavy expenses on drugs and transportation in the process.
The State has designed a novel Non-Communicable Diseases (NCD) Complex plan to integrate all components of NPCDCS and NPHCE under one composite facility. Work on the complexes in the five districts is expected to start soon and function by the end of March 2013.