PESHAWAR: More than 200,000 patients belonging to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa have received free treatment under Sehat Card Plus (SCP) programme in Punjab-based hospitals during the last two years.

According to data compiled by SCP, a total of 2.156 million have got cashless investigation and treatment services at a cost Rs54.287 billion since 2016 in about 1139 empanelled hospitals across the country. Since extension of the programme to the entire population of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, a total of 9,719,624 families are entitled to free treatment services in all the empanelled hospitals.

Of the total empanelled hospitals, 946 including 733 private and 213 public sector are located outside the province where people with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s identity cards are eligible to get free healthcare services.

In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, there are 193 designated hospitals for free services including 134 private and 59 government-owned health facilities. These hospitals are providing treatment services to people under the programme.

Officials said that empanelment of hospitals in other provinces was benefitting the residents of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, who would previously visit their home districts to seek free treatment. These families have permanent addresses of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa but settled in Punjab temporarily in connection with the jobs.

Officials say they need to empanel more health facilities for SCP

The SCP has started empanelment of hospitals outside the province after the provincial government extended the coverage of the programme to the whole population of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in November 2020 in a phase-wised manner. The government later passed Universal Health Coverage Act (UHC), 2022, to provide free health services to people.

Officials said that they needed more hospitals as they received on average 120,000 patients per month for which they also empanelled health facilities in other province.

They said that under the UHC Act, the provincial government was required to extend free health services to the whole population of the province. Prior to extension of the programme to the entire population of the province, hospitals were empanelled only in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa where poor families, selected on basis of the Benazir Income Support Programme data, were provided with free treatment services.

Of the total SCP’s beneficiaries, 650,354 in the age group of 31 year to 50 years, 588,072 aged 51 year to 70 years, 581,105 in the age group of 11 to 30 years and 141,659 children up to 10 years have received free health services.

Women remained the top beneficiaries of the programme as 1,155,133 female, 1,001,079 male and 27 transgender persons sought cashless healthcare under SCP, the free health insurance scheme started in 2016 from covering 51 per cent population of the province. The programme was later extended to the whole province.

Sources in health department said that the programme was stopped in Punjab and Islamabad Capital Territory last month but it could not be discontinued in the face of passage of UHC Act by the provincial assembly. The law makes it binding upon the government to give free health services to people. In Islamabad and Punjab, the programme has been started but there is no law.

The caretaker government in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has already announced to continue the programme. “Several residents of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa working abroad have availed free services on SCP,” sources said.

They said that people came to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa from United Arab Emirates, Malaysia and other countries to undergo liver and renal transplants because of costliness of those procedures in the countries where they worked.

Sources said that so far more than 100 liver transplants were performed free of cost on the patients with damaged livers and about 120 underwent renal transplants on SCP. They said that the cost of liver and renal transplants was Rs5 million and Rs1.4 million, respectively, and the amount was paid by the provincial government under SCP.

Published in Dawn, March 7th, 2023