AKUH to bear expenses of transexual’s cancer treatment

The News - The Aga Khan University Hospital (AKUH) has agreed to bear the expenses of a leukemia patient Khurram Iqbal’s treatment, said manager of the patient business services department of the hospital, Hassan Habib Sumani, while talking to The News.

Iqbal, better known as Sania Baloch, is a transexual, whose treatment was started at the AKUH in July 2009, and after a six-month treatment consisting of chemotherapy and medications, the disease relapsed and reached to a stage that she has to go through bone marrow transplantation.

Sumani told The News that the process of transplantation was stalled for a few weeks because there were no donors who could pay for the treatment and they were waiting for getting all the tests of the patient at hand before going for a surgery. He added that total cost of Sania’s treatment, including the transplantation, could be around Rs2.5 million, and the hospital could pay only Rs0.7 million for the treatment purposes. 

“However, her (Sania’s) family should be rest assured that the hospital will take care of all the expenses of the treatment,” Sumani said, adding that the remaining cost would be compensated by heavy donations Sania is getting from different people her family and colleagues have contacted. The AKUH officials further said that they would pay for the chemotherapy, provide medications and would take care of the overall cost of the bone marrow transplantation.

He said leukemia, a kind of cancer of blood and bones, is a ‘tricky disease’ which involves a lot of examinations and last minute decisions regarding the treatment as there is always a risk of a relapse.

On March 18, Sarah Gill along with Bindiya Rana who is a representative of an organisation for the transgenders, filed a petition against the AKUH administration in the Sindh High Court, for not bearing the treatment expenses of Sania Baloch.

“Her father is a mechanic and can not pay for her treatment. That is why we had to go to the court so that AKUH would pay for Sania’s treatment,” Sarah told The News, adding that now it is more than enough for her parents that the hospital is cooperating and bearing some of the expenses.