KARACHI: The provincial government has proposed a 32 per cent increase in the budgetary allocation for health, allocating an amount of Rs300 billion for 2024-25 against Rs227.8bn of last year.

This was announced by Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah during his budget speech in the Sindh Assembly on Friday.

The highlights of the budget included enhanced grants to several health facilities. For instance, the grant to the National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases has been increased from Rs7bn plus last year to Rs9bn for 2024-25.

Proposed allocations of some key government-run health facilities are; the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre 11.4bn; National Institute of Child Health 2.370bn; Sindh Institute of Child Health and Neonatology Rs3.11bn; 1 satellite centres of Sindh Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases Rs11bn; Sindh Institute of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation Rs3.5bn; Shah Jeelani Institute of Medical Sciences Gambat Rs16.73bn, this includes one-time grant of Rs4.723bn for the establishment of cellular and gene therapy for cancer treatment; Shaheed Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto Trauma Centre Karachi Rs3.5bn.

The government has allocated an amount of Rs115.211bn for various institutes, trusts, and non-government organisations.

The grant-in-aid for the Sindh Institute of Urology has been increased from Rs15bn last year to 18bn this year. Some other major allocations; Indus Hospital Rs10bn; Kidney Centre Rs300m, People’s Primary Healthcare Initiative Rs14.513bn; Rs2,538.723m to Syed Abdullah Shah Institute of Medical Science Sehwan Sharif, Jamshoro, Women and Child Care Trust, Shikarpur Rs450m; Rs200m for Marie Adelaide Leprosy Centres in Sindh.

An amount of Rs400m is proposed for the Institute of Ophthalmology & Visual Sciences, Hyderabad, Rs400m for Shahdadpur Institute of Medical Science Shahdadpur, Rs400m for medicines of blood cancer patients in Sindh and Rs365m for Sindh Health Care Commission Karachi.

An amount of Rs606.300m grant-in-aid is allocated to 13 institutes/NGOs for free treatment of thalassemia whereas Rs245m grant-in-aid to 12 institutes/NGOs to offer free treatment to dialysis patients.

An amount of Rs11.170bn – an increase of six per cent from 2023-24 – has been allocated for nine vertical programmes; Expanded Programme on Immunisation (Rs4,292.337m), Malaria Control Programme (Rs416.711m), Maternal Neonatal and Child Health Programme (Rs301.124m), Prevention and Control of Hepatitis (Rs2,859.510m), Prevention and Control of Blindness (Rs9,082m), Dengue Control Programme (Rs75.077m), Sindh AIDS Control Programme (Rs368.384m), Sindh Lady Health Workers Programme (Rs1,978.765m) and Tuberculosis Control Programme (Rs868.963m).

Highlighting the government’s performance in the health sector during the budget speech, the chief minister claimed that Sindh had the best tertiary health care system in the country.

“Our public sector hospitals are catering to patients from all over the country without any discrimination. The government started a free ambulance service in 2017 under a public private partnership which carried out its operations in Karachi, Thatta and Sujawal with a fleet of 85 ambulances till 2021,” the CM said.

“Later, it was transformed into Sindh Integrated Emergency & Health Services (SIEHS). Presently, a fleet of 315 state-of-the-art ambulances is available with the service,” he added.

The government, he pointed out, had enhanced the total budget of JPMC, NICVD and NICH to Rs25.75bn against pre-devolution budget of Rs1.9bn.

“Last year alone, around 3.5m patients benefitted from the free of cost services,” the CM said while speaking about the modern facilities available at those facilities.

Published in Dawn, June 15th, 2024