CUTTACK: In what could come as a boon to the poor suffering from cancer, the Acharya Harihar Regional Cancer Centre (AHRCC) here has now moved to increase the funds to be able to provide free medicines, chemotherapy and other therapeutic interventions to more number of patients. The only Government cancer hospital of the State has sought a three-fold increase in the Health Minister’s Cancer Patient Fund (HMCPF) under Rashtriya Arogya Nidhi (RAN) programme of the Union Health Ministry. The cancer centre expects the revolving fund provided to it would be raised from ` 10 to 30 lakh from this year. It has already submitted proper requisitions to the Union Ministry for the increase. According to hospital sources, the hospital has sanctioned and disbursed about ` 22 lakh under the HMCPF in the current year. The amount was drawn from the ` 10 lakh annual grant and the ` 6 lakh left over from the previous years. The rest ` 6 lakh is in the process of being reimbursed to the beneficiary patients. The financial assistance to the cancer patients under the Fund is up to a maximum of ` 1 lakh. The beneficiaries would be only those from the BPL category. The assistance would cover all expenses from diagnostics, therapeutics like chemotherapy, radiotherapy as well as drug expenses. The AHRCC is the only refuge of thousands of cancer patients not only from Odisha but also from parts of neighbouring states like Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and West Bengal. The hospital sees a patient inflow upwards of 20,000 every year. Under the scheme, the patients have to produce bills of the treatment, drugs and diagnostic procedures while being treated at the hospital to get their amounts reimbursed. The beneficiaries would be screened and recommended by the heads of the departments. “The disease notwithstanding, the patients and their family members are more burdened by the high costs of treatment. The objective is to expand the coverage of the novel programme and make it accessible to a larger number of needy people,” hospital authorities said. Meanwhile, even as the Orissa State Treatment Fund has been launched by the Government to provide financial assistance to people suffering from cancer and other serious diseases, the AHRCC has intriguingly not been included in the scheme. The Government, however, is seized of the matter and is expected to do it soon, sources said.
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