Chitwan, September 7

Three years have passed and the plan at BP Koirala Memorial Cancer Hospital, Bharatpur, to procure a PET-CT scan machine to detect cancer in its early phase, has failed to materialise.

About three years ago, then president Dr Rambaran Yadav, upon returning from Japan after having a CT scan of his abdomen done, had wished for such a machine at the cancer hospital in Nepal too.

Despite the fact that the government has been allocating budget for the purchase of the machine, the machine is yet to come.

According to the hospital executive director Dr Chin Bahadur Pun, a fund of 400 million rupees was allocated by the government for the same purpose in the last

fiscal.

“Before that too, the government had allocated 100 million rupees in the fiscal 2013/14 and 450 million rupees in the next fiscal,” he informed, adding that 210 million rupees has been allocated in the current fiscal for the same.

Further, Dr Pun said the tender process to bring the machine has been stalled from the very beginning.

“Though we’d opened a global tender in the very first year to bring the machine, the tender process had to be stopped after cases were filed over the same issue with the Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority and the concerned ministry,” he said.

He added that the Ministry of Health is yet to approve a fresh tender following the erstwhile stalled one.

It is said that lack of pressure on the concerned ministry and the internal dispute in the hospital are also to blame for the delay in the re-tender for procurement of the machine.

“For one, we’ve failed to pile enough pressure on the ministry to approve the re-tender as the hospital management committee meeting hasn’t convened for the past four/five months. Similarly, there are some people who don’t want the hospital to prosper,” he said,.

He added that the hospital was planning to procure the machine and manage other necessary things as part of a multi-year project.

Abdomen CT scan machine is handy for testing different types of cancers including brain, throat, lungs, liver, breast and kidney and detect signs of inflammation, infection or injury.