LAHORE: It seems most of the private healthcare outlets and senior doctors of the public sector hospitals are in a tacit agreement to discredit the Sehat Sahulat Programme (health card), which is evident from growing disappointment among the public (card holders) with regard to this pro-people initiative taken by the last Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf government.

It has transpired that a majority of private hospitals either do not accept health card for treatment of diseases covered under the programme, or use delaying tactics in treatment of those who want to avail the facility.

Cases are surfacing in the private and public sector hospitals of the provincial capital where the patients are being refused treatment under the Sehat Sahulat Pogramme, while the government functionaries are making tall claims about its success.

A citizen, who wished not to be named, told Dawn that he took his seven-year-old son, Abu Bakar, complaining of acute pain in testicles to the paediatrics surgery OPD of a private healthcare facility in Shadman in Lahore. “The doctors, after necessary diagnostic tests and ultrasound, concluded that the child is suffering from ‘right sided hydrocele’, prescribing surgery,” the father said.

Patients who want to avail health card being put on long waiting lists

Hydrocele is a type of swelling in the scrotum that occurs when fluid accumulates in the thin sheath surrounding a testicle.

The father says that when he asked the doctors to conduct the surgery through health card, they simply told him that they offer the procedure only in two categories – private and semi-private. On further inquiry, he was told the private treatment would cost around Rs100,000 and under the semi-private option he would have to pay Rs80,000 to Rs90,000.

As the treatment cost was beyond the paying capacity of the middle-class family, the father insisted the surgery be conducted through the health card.

“The doctors offered to conduct the procedure under the health card after six months, saying the hospital had a long list of patients put on schedule under the government programme,” the father said.

He added that another senior paediatric surgeon, who had served as vice chancellor of the University of Health Sciences and principal of Allama Iqbal Medical College, also refused to perform the surgical procedure with the same excuse, but agreed to treat the boy ‘on cash’ payment.

The dejected father says he got almost similar answers from at least ten other private hospitals in Lahore, most of them saying they don’t offer paediatric surgery. While those having such surgical facility, demanded fee “in cash” to get the job done either the same day, or within 24 hours.

“Meanwhile, I came to know that most of the private hospitals’ surgeons were not satisfied with the fee offered to them through the health card, as they normally charge Rs50,000 for even a minor surgery like hydrocele, besides other expenses”, he says.

He laments that the surgeons at the public sector hospitals are also putting patients on long waiting lists, or encourage them to go to private facilities, as they too were paid a meagre fee under the insurance programme.

Similarly, a woman, Fakhira, (name changed) told this reporter that on visiting a private hospital on Jail Road for removal of gall bladder of her 26-year-old daughter after being warned of “irreversible complications” in case of delay in surgery, she was refused the treatment under Sehat Sahulat Programme. She says that she was told that some surgeries under the health card were not “preferred” by the private sector health facilities.

Sources in health sector say that many senior doctors and private healthcare establishments were trying to discredit this pro-people programme as they fear its success will end their hegemony.

They say the Sehat Sahulat Programme could be a revolutionary initiative, but it seems “the medical mafias” have developed a nexus to fail it like many others taken by different governments to provide relief to the public.

Published in Dawn, September 1st, 2022