Pakistan’s first-ever Gamma Knife treatment facility to treat patients in Karachi free of charge

Karachi: The first-ever Gamma knife facility in public health sector of Pakistan will provide free treatment to the patients suffering from the problem of brain tumours and lesions.

The announcement to this effect was made by Sindh Chief Minister, Syed Murad Ali Shah, as he inaugurated the facility on Ojha Campus of Dow University of Health Sciences (DUHS), Karachi.

Gamma knife treatment costs around Rs2,50,000 per patient and the facility can treat 500 people in a year. The Sindh government will bear all these treatment expenses.

Saying that 400 such treatment units are functional all over the world, Syed Murad Ali Shah felt proud that the DUHS in Karachi is one among them.

He said that earlier his government had ensured state-of-the-art treatment facilities at the public sector health units of Sindh like cyberknife facility for treating cancer at the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre and liver transplant procedure at the Gambat Institute of Medical Sciences.

He said the Gama knife provided the modern radiotherapy treatment that allows the patient to be discharged from the hospital the same day.

He said unlike any conventional invasive surgery it did not involve cutting, puncturing of skin or bleeding so the procedure is free of pain.

Sindh Health Minister, Dr Azra Fazal Pechuho, said the procedure also protected the healthy tissues of brain. She said the treatment also didn’t expose the patient to unnecessary radiation as that was vital for health of children.

Gamma knife is a radiation therapy that uses computerised treatment planning software to help physicians locate and irradiate small targets within the head and brain with very high precision. The treatment delivers intense radiation doses to the target area while sparing surrounding tissue.