Ahsan Iqbal, the Federal Minister for Planning and Development, and Special Initiatives has said that work on Islamabad’s first state-of-the-art cancer hospital, will resume.
The previous Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) government had authorized a proposal for a 200-bed cancer hospital that was to help 7,000 impoverished patients yearly, for which it had sanctioned Rs. 5 billion under the Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP).
The project was ready to begin, and the Public Works Department (PWD) had prepared the plan for its construction by allocating space on the grounds of the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS).
Minister Iqbal stated, “Our top priority is to help the public by reviving delayed projects.”
According to Pakistan’s state-run health statistics organization, the Health Research Institute, over 2.5 million new instances of cancer are diagnosed each year, with 100,000 people dying. It only has 27 cancer treatment centers, which medical professionals regard to be a serious hurdle in cancer patient treatment.
They claim that Pakistan has a severe shortage of cancer treatment facilities, with just 10,000 to 15,000 patients treated each year, and that the World Health Organization (WHO) has stated that Pakistan’s cancer treatment facilities are insufficient.
