ISLAMABAD: The federal government has decided to pay full premium of the Prime Minister’s National Health Programme (PMNHP) for Sindh and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to ensure its success in the two provinces which had earlier refused to become part of this programme. Moreover, the scheme, which was initially started for 23 districts of the country, is now being expanded to 60 districts.

Minister for National Health Services Saira Afzal Tarar said this while chairing the 15th National Steering Committee meeting of the PMNHP on Thursday night.

It is pertinent to mention here that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif launched the programme on Dec 31, 2015, for Islamabad and described it as the first step towards making Pakistan a welfare state. The scheme was supposed to be expanded 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 KP had declined to become part of the federal government programme in which they also had to contribute.

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

However, in January this year, the prime minister announced that the programme would be extended across the country. He was of the view that people of KP and Sindh were more vulnerable to diseases and prevailing poverty in the provinces was not allowing them to afford healthcare facilities.

Federal government to pay full premium of PMNHP for Sindh and KP

Ms Tarar told the meeting that 100 per cent federal funding would be used for the scheme in KP and Sindh to provide the secondary and priority health coverage to poor families whose daily income is below Rs200.

She said the scheme would now be expanded to 60 districts of the country — 11 districts of Fata, 10 of AJK, seven of GB, 11 of Punjab, 12 of Balochistan and four each of Sindh and KP.

The minister said 17,000 patients had so far been admitted to 81 hospitals empanelled under the programme. Sharing figures, she said 104 open heart surgeries had been performed and 119 patients had been treated for different forms of cancer. Other treatments which have so far been provided under the scheme are: 643 cataract eye surgeries, 1,289 caesarean sections, 1,080 normal deliveries, 796 appendix operations, 658 operations for gallstones, 866 hernia operations, 830 hysterectomy, 275 angiographies, 217 angioplasties and 469 dialysis.

She said Rs200 million had so far been paid to the empanelled hospitals for treatment of the enrolled patients. She said there was a strong emphasis on monitoring, sharing that under the third party evaluation by Nadra there was more than 92 per cent patient satisfaction from those treated under the programme.

In the revised PC-1 an amount of Rs8.1 billion has been allocated for the programme, the minister said. Work is under way for the next phase of the program which will cover the entire country, providing the service to all families living below the poverty line.

Published in Dawn, March 31st, 2017