Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Health Min­is­ter Dr Fuad Khan says Gov­ern­ment will not sub­sidise the cost of blood tests for kid­ney pa­tients who are al­ready get­ting free dial­y­sis.For the first time ever, pa­tients suf­fer­ing from re­nal fail­ure are get­ting up to three ses­sions of dial­y­sis for free.

"We are al­ready sav­ing them up to $10,000 (a month) be­cause we are pay­ing for dial­y­sis ses­sions. To now sub­sidise blood tests will on­ly en­cour­age peo­ple to live un­healthy lifestyles. If you are forced to pay for some­thing, you will take enough care to en­sure that you and your fam­i­ly ad­here to a healthy lifestyle," Khan said in an in­ter­view.

Say­ing there were too many obese peo­ple in the coun­try, both adults and chil­dren, Khan said Gov­ern­ment was not in a po­si­tion to pro­vide every­thing for free."Peo­ple refuse to have healthy lifestyles and refuse to take their med­ica­tion and end up with se­ri­ous kid­ney fail­ure and that is why there is a vol­ume of kid­ney pa­tients," he said.

A to­tal of 16 pri­vate health in­sti­tu­tions were au­tho­rised by Gov­ern­ment in March to pro­vide dial­y­sis to hun­dreds of pa­tients with re­nal fail­ure, Khan said, and since that ini­tia­tive was pro­vid­ed the num­ber of pa­tients ac­cess­ing treat­ment had in­creased ten-fold.

Some kid­ney pa­tients said they were un­com­fort­able with the ex­ist­ing arrange­ment and were bet­ter off when they ac­cessed care at the pub­lic hos­pi­tals. One doc­tor said dial­y­sis pa­tients must do two sep­a­rate blood tests to mon­i­tor the state of their blood be­fore and af­ter each dial­y­sis ses­sion.Re­nal pa­tient Sharon Sabessar said this re­quire­ment was a case of some of the pri­vate in­sti­tu­tions hold­ing pa­tients to ran­som.

"They telling us that we can­not get dial­y­sis un­less we get the blood tests done. We can bare­ly af­ford to buy med­ica­tion, how can they ex­pect us to pay for blood work?" she ques­tioned.Sabessar said she paid $2,000 month­ly for med­ica­tion as it was un­avail­able at the dis­pen­sary of the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal.

"Since last year we can­not get our med­i­cine at the hos­pi­tal, so some of us have to buy it. Not every­body could af­ford it," she added.She said be­fore the Gov­ern­ment signed an agree­ment with the 16 pri­vate health in­sti­tu­tions, all blood work was done for free at the hos­pi­tal. "We are ask­ing whether the Gov­ern­ment can sub­sidise the blood work be­cause we re­al­ly can­not af­ford to pay $4,000 every month," Sabessar said.

An­oth­er pa­tient Carv­er Ochoo said he was un­hap­py."It is un­fair be­cause at every in­sti­tu­tion the price varies. We do not know if the health in­sti­tu­tions are al­ready be­ing paid by Gov­ern­ment for the blood tests. We need clar­i­fi­ca­tion on this," Ochoo said.Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, one of the di­rec­tors at a pri­vate med­ical in­sti­tu­tion con­tract­ed by the Min­istry of Health said the State cov­ers the bill for the dial­y­sis and not the blood work.

"We do not com­pel the pa­tient to do the blood tests at our in­sti­tu­tion. They can go to the hos­pi­tal if they wish," she said. The of­fi­cial said dis­cus­sions were cur­rent­ly on­go­ing with the min­istry to de­ter­mine whether the blood test fees could al­so be sub­sidised.A meet­ing is ex­pect­ed to be held at the old ca­su­al­ty build­ing of the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal on Sat­ur­day to dis­cuss the prob­lems.