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KARACHI: Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah on Friday inaugurated the public sector’s first Gamma Knife radiosurgery facility at Dow University Hospital, Ojha Campus in Karachi and announced providing free of charge treatment to patients.
“This is a very expensive treatment and each procedure costs Rs250,000, therefore the provincial government would bear its entire cost and the patients’ treatment would be made totally free,” the Chief Minister said while addressing the inauguration ceremony.
The facility will be used to treat lesions in the human brain. It is said to have been established in record time at a cost of Rs800 million provided by the provincial government.
Murad Ali Shah further said this was the first Gamma Knife facility in the public sector of the country, which was something to be proud of. “We have established some remarkable facilities in the health sector such as the cyber knife facility at the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical College (JPMC), liver transplant institute at Gambat, and now the Gamma Knife facility at Down University Hospital,” he added.
He added that the opposition, even then, kept criticising the Sindh government, adding that the provincial government would continue to serve the people of the Sindh. “I don’t care what our opponents are propagating, we believe in service to the people of the province,” he maintained.
Speaking about the procedure, CM said it was radiosurgery, a very precise form of radiation therapy that focused intense beams of gamma rays with pinpoint accuracy to treat lesions in the brain.
He added that in contrast with its name, the surgery involved neither traditional surgery nor an actual knife. “Gamma Knife is called a surgery because its outcome is similar to that of a surgical procedure,” he explained.
Speaking on the occasion, Minister for Health Dr Azra Fazal Pechuho said another advantage of the Leksell Gamma Knife Icon was its superior ability to spare healthy brain tissue, compared to other systems.
