Pain-free: Pakistan's $4.1 million robotic cancer treatment

KARACHI: Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Center (JPMC) in Karachi is to have its second robotic radiosurgery system for cancer within six months — and the treatment is free.
Pakistan’s first CyberKnife robotic radiosurgery, worth $4.1 million, was arranged by the Patients' Aid Foundation NGO, with donations mostly from philanthropists and the corporate sector. 
Professor Dr. Tariq Mahmood, head of the Department of Radiology at JPMC, told Arab News that treatment using the sophisticated radiation tool will be free. “The price tag for such treatment in other countries ranges from $60,000 to $90,000 per person,” he said.
 “CyberKnife is cutting-edge technology and the treatment is highly focused, painless and non-invasive,” he said.
“This robotic technology can cure early-stage cancer of the brain, head, neck, spine and prostate by one to five sessions of two hours.”
The number of patients being treated with CyberKnife would increase to 24 per day with the commissioning of the second robotic machine, which is expected to start operations in next six months, compared to the nine patients being treated at present, Professor Mahmood said. 
The treatment is not only being provided to Pakistani nationals but to patients from Baharain, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Nigeria, Russia and Afghanistan.
“Many CyberKnife specialists are on our faculty who not only visit from the USA, UK, Turkey, Czechoslovakia, Saudi Arabia and France but are also available for online opinion,” Professor Mahmood said.
The department began operations in 2012 and has completed 6,000 sessions of radiosurgery.
Dr. Seemin Jamali, executive director of JPMC, said that the CyberKnife project in Pakistan was the result of a public-private partnership that enabled the country to have one of the most sophisticated and expensive medical technologies.
Land for the establishment of the CyberKnife unit was provided by the JPMC while other expenditures are being arranged by the PAF, she said. 
“If you translate the amount into rupees that would be between Rs 5 million to Rs 9 million, which is beyond the affordability of even the higher-income group of society, but this all is being done free of cost,” Dr. Jamali said. 
 As a tertiary care hospital, JPMC treats 1.4 million patients a year.
“We provide medical equipment, staff and consumables wherever and whenever it is needed,” Sohail Hussain, the manager of marketing and donor relations at PAF, told Arab News, adding that about 150 poor patients are provided with welfare services at the JPMC daily. 
As the major hospital in the public sector in Pakistan, JPMC provides emergency care to about 1,500 people a day.
About 83,000 cancer patients are referred to JPMC annually, and of those more than 7,000 are given surgical treatment.
Though the CyberKnife facility helps to reduce the number of advanced-stage cancer patients, the number of cancer patients is on the rise, mainly due to changes in lifestyle.