RECORDER REPORT

LAHORE: Punjab Institute of Neurosciences has taken a good initiative for the treatment of Parkinson’s patients under which the process of purchasing (DBS Implants for Parkinson Disease) at a cost of Rs 55 million has been started.

As a result, 40 patients suffering from this disease will be able to avail this facility simultaneously. Talking to media, founder of DBS Treatment in Pakistan Executive Director, PINS and Renowned Neurosurgeon Prof Dr Khalid Mehmood told that under the Prime Minister’s Health Vision, Chief Minister Sardar Usman Bazdar and Provincial Health Minister Dr Yasmeen Rashid patient-friendly policy, all facilities at the Institute will be provided free of cost to people suffering from tremors and muscle cramps. In this regard, if the doctors feel the need for surgery after the medical examination of the patient, then not a single penny will have to be spent for the treatment at “PINS” and the patients will have modern medical facilities in their own country like abroad.

Prof Dr Khalid, quoting Parkinson’s said that patient’s hands tremble and it is not difficult but impossible to hold a cup of tea or a spoon to his mouth. Similarly, in people with Parkinson’s the nerve cells in the brain die and it happens in the deepest part of the brain, in the part from which many movements of the human body are controlled and which gradually merges with the cerebral cortex. The initial symptoms of the disease begin to appear ten or twenty years before its full spread, while about 60 to 70 percent of these cells are affected, then the symptoms of Parkinson’s begin to appear, he added. ED PINS further told that these include obvious disturbances in body movements, muscle spasms, tremors, or difficulty standing or walking.

Neurosurgeon Khalid added that Parkinson’s (tremor) is an expensive treatment which costs around Rs 10 million abroad and up to Rs. 2.5 million in Pakistan but the present Government has provided resources to provide free facilities to the people suffering from this disease here at PINS.