Black fungus to be treated free in U’khand under health schemes
Patients can get cashless treatment in private hospitals under Ayushman Bharat scheme and Atal Ayushman Uttarakhand Yojana
DEHRADUN: The Uttarakhand State Health Authority (SHA) has issued an order for free treatment of mucormycosis or black fungus under the health schemes of the Centre and the state.
The order issued on Friday evening said black fungus can be treated under Ayushman Bharat-Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana of the Centre, Atal Ayushman Uttarakhand Yojana and the state government health scheme.
The order was issued because there is no provision in the Centre’s guidelines for the treatment of black fungus, said Dr AK Goyal, the director of claim management in SHA.
“The Centre’s guidelines provide a package for Covid-19 treatment. However, the package does not have any provision for treatment of mucormycosis. There is no guideline for the treatment of black fungus under the government health schemes,” he said.
“Therefore, two procedures are proposed for treatment of black fungus in private hospitals under the health schemes. Under one procedure, a patient suffering from this fatal fungal infection could get immediate free and cashless treatment on the basis of Ayushman card.”
He said this procedure would
cover expensive drugs for the treatment of mucormycosis as provided under the guidelines of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) and the Union health ministry.
“The hospital claims of such medicines administered to the patient can be submitted to the SHA in offline mode and the same will be settled on the basis of the actual invoice submitted,” Dr Goyal said.
He said that the other procedure is related to patients coming to hospitals for treatment of secondary manifestations of Covid-19 after initial treatment and discharge from hospitals.
“Under this procedure the hospital can book the specific surgical treatment as per the guidelines and in case the same is not available, then it can be booked as an unspecified package
as per the National Health Authority’s guidelines with due justification,” said Dr Goyal.
Mucormycosis is a condition that afflicts people post Covid. Covid patients who are also diabetic need to be more careful as they are more vulnerable to the disease, said Amit Tyagi, surgeon and head of mucormycosis team at AIIMS Rishikesh.
According to the health department, the state has reported 155 black fungus cases till Friday.
The state government has declared black fungus an epidemic and designated existing 12 dedicated Covid hospitals, including AIIMS Rishikesh, to treat patients who contracted fungal infection.
States like Rajasthan, Bihar, Gujarat, Punjab, Haryana, Karnataka, Odisha, Telangana and
Tamil Nadu have already declared it a ‘notifiable’ disease under the Epidemic Diseases Act, thereby making it mandatory to report every Mucormycosis case to the state government.
Amphotericin-B drug is used for treating patients with black fungus. Amid shortage of drugs, the state received 15,000 vials of Amphotericin-B from a Rudrapur-based pharmacy company.
State drug controller Tajbar Singh Jaggi said, “These injections came on orders of Doon Medical College Hospital, so they will first go to them and after that, they will be distributed.”
The Uttarakhand government has issued Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) to prevent the black marketing of black fungus medicine keeping in view cases of the disease being reported across the country.