Kathmandu, April 3:

Drug producer Pfizer Inc and Axios Healthcare Development Inc have established the SUTENT Patient Assistance Programme (SPAP) to ensure that some poor patients in the BP Koirala Memorial Cancer Hospital, Chitwan, and Patan Academy of Health Sciences, Patan, get their doses of SUTENT, a new oncology drug.

The programme will identify patients that require SUTENT but are unable to afford and thereby provide drugs free of cost through prescribing physicians in these hospitals, a release of Pfizer said today .

The SPAP is a part of the worldwide roll-out of this new medicine that has recently received approval from regulatory agencies around the world, the release said. The programme involves the donation of SUTENT to patients specifically diagnosed with the locally approved indications of either metastatic Renal Cell Carcinoma (mRCC) or some rare, but life threatening forms of cancer.

The SPAP aims to cover all patients diagnosed with mRCC or few other forms of cancer, it said. Currently there are four patients being served under the programme. Based on the epidemiological data, the hospitals are expected to identify some 40 to 45 patients suffering from these forms of cancer in the nation.