ISLAMABAD - Health experts shared good news with the Supreme Court on Monday that the locally manufactured cardiac stents — a tube shaped device placed in the coronary arteries to keep the arteries open — will finally make their way to the markets by June this year.
As our population has reportedly one of the highest risks of coronary heart disease, with one third of all deaths attributed to cardiac arrest, it was need of the hour to ensure availability of stents to poor patients at low rates and that was only possible when these are manufactured locally.
According to information shared with the Apex Court, the locally produced stents will be available to the patients at Rs 15000 for which they earlier used to pay somewhere between seventy thousand up to two hundred thousand as these available in different qualities were imported from other countries.
So it is going to be a big relief for cardiac patients who have to undergo an expensive procedure of treatment for a prolonged period.
One issue with the imported stents was also that in certain cases it also emerged that substandard stents were imported and inserted in patients putting their life at risk just to pocket more money by the conscienceless people.
While the local production of stents will ensure its availability at affordable rates, the relevant authorities also need to keep a check on their quality by ensuring strict monitoring and check of the companies registered to provide the same as after all it is a matter of life and death for a person and those compromising on the quality should be liable to severe punishment.
Relevant laws could also be enacted for this purpose. Also the pursuit of providing cheap and good healthcare facilities must continue for the treatment of other deadly diseases such as liver, as currently there is no liver transplant centre in the public sector and people mostly have to travel abroad for the expensive treatment.
One liver transplant centre was established at the PIMS but it was shut after the failure of its first transplant surgery. We will urge the PM to personally look into this matter and ensure reopening of the centre that already has necessary equipment but only needed capable surgeons and other trained staff to run it again.