PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government is passing a law from the provincial assembly to provide legal cover to Sehat Insaf Card Programme, started last year for giving free health facilities to the poor families at the public and private hospitals.

The draft bill Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Sehat Insaf Act, 2018 has been tabled in the provincial assembly that would become a law after its passage by the house. After the passage of the bill, Sehat Insaf Card Programme would become a regular programme of the Annual Development Programme of the health department.

The programme was started in January 2017 to provide free health facilities to 1.8 million families of the province selected from the list of Benazir Income Support Programme with an income of less than two dollars a day.

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The government had allocated Rs5.4 billion initially under which each family was entitled to be given Rs540,000 for treatment every year. The programme covers only in-patients.

Early this year, the government included 600,000 more families to benefit 69 per cent population for which an additional amount of Rs1billion was allocated. Under it, the deserving patients can seek diagnostic and treatment services in 110 selected hospitals of the province.

The programme has so far benefitted 100,000 patients and about Rs2 billion have been spent on it since January 2017. The government has been implementing the programme through State Life Insurance Corporation and each health facility gets the amount at the end of every month.

The bill has been tabled to make it a lawful programme, didn’t have any legal standing as of now. It could be stopped any time by the provincial government in the absence of legal cover, which prompted the government to table a bill in the assembly.

The proposed bill, if passed, will make it binding upon the government to provide healthcare to people through social health protection programme to be known as Sehat Insaf Card (SIC) Programme and its beneficiaries would be selected on the basis of BISP criteria for which they would be issued cards.

The recipients of the cards would stand entitled to undergo free health services in the designated hospitals on the basis of the health department’s eligibility criteria.

The government may notify the diseases to be treated under the programme and would provide regular amount for it in the budget, according to the proposed Act, which is likely to be taken by the assembly in its current session.

The health department would submit annual performance report to the government. The proposed law says that the SICs already issued before the enactment of this Act, shall be deemed to have validly issued under this law and shall continue in the same manner, as if issued under this Act.

The government may, by notification in the official gazette, make rules for carrying out the purpose of this Act. The health department has been trying to legalise the programme and get budget for it in the Annual Development Programme.

During the current year, the health department’s development badly suffered because of allocation of Rs2.79 billion to the SSP that was originally meant for development.

Published in Dawn, April 16th, 2018