PESHAWAR: Heart patients who can’t afford the high cost of surgery have been benefiting from the Sehat Sahulat programme under which the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government has been providing free treatment to the people.

According to officials, a total of 66,000 people have been treated under the health programme since January 2017, which include 57 per cent heart patients, 17 per cent general surgery, 10 per cent each trauma and cancer and the rest of people for other sicknesses. They said that the programme started at the cost of Rs5.4 billion by the KP government had proved very helpful for those who had chronic cardiac problems, but were unable to bear the cost of treatment.

Under the programme, each of the entitled families has been issued the Sehat Insaf Card (SIC) on which eight members of a family can avail of free treatment at both the public and private sector hospitals.

Officials say free treatment being provided to people at 100 hospitals

Cardiologists at the Peshawar hospitals, interviewed by this correspondent, revealed that they had received patients who had undergone investigations such as angiography on the basis of which they required bypass operation, but they couldn’t proceed further due to lack of money. They said that the cost of surgery was about Rs300,000 which was unaffordable for most of the people.

However, the Sehat Sahulat programme has enabled the people to undergo free surgeries at the hospitals. The government can spend Rs540,000 per family a year.

The government in collaboration with the State Life Insurance Corporation (SLIC) is providing free treatment to the people at 100 designated hospitals of the province. So far, Rs1.63 billion has been spent on the treatment, the officials said.

SLIC provincial medical officer Dr Manzoor Ali said that the annual allocation for the programme was Rs2.6 billion and the number of families covered by the programme stood at 1.8 million, 51 per cent of the total population. However, the government has decided to enlist 800,000 more families from January 2018 after which the coverage will reach 69 per cent of the population.

He said that the people had been included in the programme on the basis of data provided by the Benazir Income Support Programme. He said that so far, the families with $1-2 income per day had been enlisted in the programme, but for the new family the income range would be between $3-4 a day.

Distribution of SICs would be started to people from November 30, he said, adding that SICs of 66,000 families who had availed of free treatment this year would be recharged next year to enable them to get free medication.

Dr Ali said that initially the SIC-holders had been visiting the private hospitals where they received prompt services compared to the government hospitals, which hadn’t yet developed proper procedures to treat them. He said that the ratio of patients visiting the private and government hospitals was 92:8 in the early six months, but it now stood at 57:43.

He said that the medical teaching institution Lady Reading Hospital had treated 4,000 patients and Khyber Teaching Hospital and Hayatabad Medical Complex 2,000 each. Most of the patients are now visiting the public sector hospitals, which have more specialties.

Published in Dawn, November 19th, 2017