ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif announced on Monday extension of the National Health Programme to the entire country.

“Access to quality healthcare services is the inherent right of all Pakistanis, which was unfortunately denied to them for long. It is only through provision of quality and affordable health services that a nation can achieve its full potential and gains on the economic and social fronts. We want to reach out to the poorest of the poor with a comprehensive package of curative health services,” he said while presiding over a meeting at the PM House.

The prime minister launched the programme on Dec 31, 2015, for Islamabad and described it as the first step towards making the country a welfare state.

The scheme was supposed to be extended to all parts of Punjab, Balochistan, Azad Jammu and Kashmir, Gilgit-Baltistan and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) as the governments of Sindh and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa had declined to become part of the scheme in which they also had to contribute their share.

Later, the KP government launched its own programme for a few districts of the province.

Under the federal government programme, a family gets Rs50,000 for secondary care treatment which begins as soon as a patient is hospitalised. It includes all kinds of diseases.

Under the project, a family can get Rs50,000 for secondary care treatment which begins as soon as a patient is hospitalised

Each family can get a treatment of Rs250,000 under the category of priority diseases which includes cancer, accident, burns, diabetic complications, heart bypass and infections. So each family can get treatment of overall Rs300,000 per year and that amount can double in case of emergency, with the support of Pakistan Baitul Mal.

The prime minister said that the federal government would implement the programme in the entire country as remote areas of KP and Sindh were more vulnerable to diseases and the prevailing poverty in those areas did not allow the people to afford healthcare facilities.

“I believe that the combination of diseases and poverty could be lethal for any poor family. We will break this deadly nexus between poverty and diseases,” Mr Sharif said.

He asked the Ministry of National Health Services (NHS) to extend the programme to the entire country, including Fata, Gilgit-Baltistan and AJK, with a strict monitoring system and zero tolerance for inefficiency at the implementation level.

“Our government will ensure sustainability of this programme through uninterrupted and continuous flow of public sector resources. I do not want the pace of this crucially vital programme to be hampered by lack of resources as there is nothing dearer to me than the success of this initiative,” he said.

The meeting was attended by the prime minister’s daughter Maryam Nawaz, Minister of State for NHS Saira Afzal Tarar, Special Assistant to the PM on Foreign Affairs Tariq Fatemi and senior officials.

The scheme has been launched in 11 districts: Islamabad, Quetta, Lasbela, Loralai, Muzaffarabad, Kotli, Skardu, Diamer, Rahim Yar Khan, Khanewal and Narowal.

More than 800,000 families, who were already enrolled under the Benazir Income Support Programme, have been included in the health programme and more than 12,000 people have been treated for various illnesses in panel hospitals.

Under the directives of the prime minister, the programme will now have a countrywide outreach, offering free-of-cost treatment to the poorest.

The National Database and Regis­tration Authority has been involved in real time monitoring the status of the programme’s implementation.

The PMNHP has also developed a service through which any citizen can text its computerised national identity card number to ‘8500’ to check its beneficiary status.

An official of the NHS ministry said that the prime minister had made it clear that unavailability of funds should not become a hurdle in the way of the programme.

“The scheme could not be started in KP and Sindh because these provinces were not willing to pay their share of funds for the programme, but now it has been decided that the federal government will pay the funds if both provinces do not pay their shares,” he said.

“The programme will be implemented across the country within a year and Ms Tarar will soon brief the media about its details,” he said.

Published in Dawn January 31st, 2017