‘Pakistanis rely more on Indian doctors’

NEW DELHI - Pakistanis looking for a liver transplant rely more on Indian doctors as they are more efficient, said a Pakistan-based neurologist whose daughter recently underwent an organ transplant in Delhi.

“If I hadn’t travelled from Pakistan to India (for the transplant), my daughter would be in the grave by now,” Sajjad Hussain told IANS Monday.

“My daughter was almost dead but the Indian doctors have given her a new life,” he said. His daughter Sara Hussain, a medical practitioner herself, needed a transplant for her diseased liver.

Hussain said when it comes to health related issues, 90 percent of Pakistanis prefer travelling to India as there is no language barrier, and the similar eating and living habits make it easy for them to adapt to the circumstances, Hussain said.

Earlier most Pakistanis used to come for kidney transplants but with this procedure now available in their country also, most of them now come to India for liver transplant as Pakistani doctors have less expertise or are not trained in it, said Subhash Gupta, a senior consultant, liver transplant at the Apollo hospital here.

Meanwhile, Hussain said that hepatitis C, an infectious liver disease caused by the hepatitis C virus (HCV) affecting the liver and spread by blood to blood contact, has more or less assumed epidemic-like proportions in Pakistan and people from Islamabad and Lahore particularly are mostly affected by liver related disease.

“The main reason for such issues are that the drinking water in Lahore and Islamabad is contaminated and used syringes are reused in hospitals,” he said.

An Apollo hospital official said that the hospital had carried out around 70 liver transplants on Pakistani nationals alone in the past two years. “Science has no borders, particularly when it comes to health issues,” said Anupam Sibal, group medical director.

“Compared to other nationals, it’s easy to treat Pakistanis because their genetics and disease patterns are almost the same as ours,” he added.