PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government launched the third phase of Sehat Card Plus scheme on Friday to extend the programme to the remaining six districts of the province, including Peshawar, Mardan, Charsadda, Swabi, Nowshera and Haripur.

With the completion of the third phase, 14 million people of these six districts would get free medical treatment facilities in the enlisted public and private sector hospitals.

Chief Minister Mahmood Khan formally launched the third phase of the scheme at a ceremony here, said an official statement.

Addressing the ceremony, the chief minister termed the Sehat Card Plus Scheme a flagship programme and pro-poor initiative of the present government and said extension of the scheme to the entire population of the province was an important step in line with the prime minister’s vision of welfare state.

He said that by end of this month the scheme would be rolled out to the entire population of the province. He said the government was spending around Rs18 billion on the scheme annually.

CM says initiative to help reduce poverty in province

He said the scheme had already been extended to 100 per cent population of the merged districts, but with lesser coverage of Rs600,000 per household a year.

He announced that from the new financial year the annual coverage of Rs600,000 for merged districts would also be increased to Rs1 million to bring it at par with that of the settled districts.

The chief minister stated that the provincial government had also decided to get kidney and liver transplants covered under the Sehat Card Scheme.

“Sehat Card Plus is also a complete package of social protection,” the chief minister remarked and added that besides providing free treatment facilities the scheme would also help reduce poverty in the province and improve living standard of the people.

Besides provincial cabinet members and government functionaries, the event was also attended by parliamentarians.

Earlier, provincial minister for health Taimur Saleem Jhagra told the ceremony that with the extension of scheme to the entire population of Malakand and Hazara regions, admissions of patients in government hospitals of Malakand and Hazara regions would increase manifold.

Published in Dawn, January 2nd, 2021