PESHAWAR: PTI chairman Imran Khan on Wednesday urged his party’s government in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to focus on the provision of social and economic justice to the people in the province and stay away from indulging in gimmickry and self-projection.

He was addressing the Sehat Insaf Card launching ceremony here.

The PTI chief said the KP government had undertaken reforms in health sector to improve the affairs of government hospitals and improve patient care.

Imran urges govt to avoid gimmickry, self-projection

He said the current programme was aimed at covering 50 per cent population in the whole province through provision of free treatment.

Imran Khan appreciated the provincial government for paying for the treatment of the poor people and asked it to speed up efforts to improve health and educational facilities in the province.

“If we invest in people, educate them and provide them with health facilities, they will build motorways and roads in future,” he said.

The PTI chairman said it was the first programme of its kind, which would cover all dangerous diseases and under which the people would get a card from the government to get free treatment.

He said the efforts to improve patient care at government hospitals had suffered delay but he was hopeful that the people would soon feel betterment in service delivery at main hospitals.

Earlier, Chief Minister Pervez Khattak said the government was providing free facilities to the people at its hospitals and that the Health Insurance Scheme had been extended from four selected districts to the whole province.

He said half of the population would be covered under the programme.

On the occasion, the CM gave away health insurance cards to deserving families to formally launch the programme.

Initially, the programme was launched in designated districts, including Kohat, Mardan, Malakand and Chitral, with the financial assistance of German bank, KFW. However, it reflected in the provincial annual development programme has been extended to the entire province.

A statement issued here said the two years programme would cost Rs5362.2 million and would be run as regular scheme through proper legislation.

Under it, health insurance cards will be issued to 1.8 million households through which eight individuals will stand entitled to free medical treatment up to Rs540,000.

The statement said the move would benefit around 150 million people in the province.

“Free medical treatment facilities can be availed from designated private and public sector hospitals. The programme, besides ensuring free medical treatment to the deserving population will also help reduce poverty rate in the province. Premium for health insurance card is around Rs1,700 for household, which will be paid by the provincial government.”

The statement said the services covered in the scheme would be the hospital services normally provided at the secondary and tertiary level such as medicines, general surgery, gynaecology and obstetrics, ophthalmology and ENT etc.

It added that the pre- and post-hospitalisation care up to one day prior to hospitalisation and up to five days from the date of discharge from the hospital would be part of the initiative.

“In case of death of people in hospital, Rs10, 000 will be paid as funeral charges, while Rs1000 will be paid in case of pregnancy or delivery as traveling allowance under the health insurance scheme,” it said.

The statement said the provincial government was planning to provide health insurance facility to all government servants of the province.

Published in Dawn, September 1st, 2016