PESHAWAR: More than 700 residents of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa have undergone free organ transplants under Sehat Card Plus (SCP) scheme since 2022.

The free health insurance programme, launched in 2016, has benefitted five million people of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa at the cost of Rs136 billion, according to official data.

Most of the recipients of cashless diagnostic and treatment services include cardiac, gynaecology, women and children, cancer, medical, surgical, ENT, eye, orthopaedic, urology and general patients.

The government started free kidney transplants in 2022, followed by liver transplant, bone marrow and cochlear implants to facilitate patents as most people couldn’t afford the high fee charged by hospitals for these procedures.

Govt has spent Rs136 billion on health insurance scheme

The beneficiaries of SCP included 736 persons, who underwent organ transplants costing Rs937 million. Under the scheme, 10.6 million families are entitled to receive treatment worth Rs1 million per year in about 700 empanelled hospitals across the country. However, the cost of organ transplants is more than Rs1 million owing to which the government has established a reserve funds from where money are released for such procedures.

The most expensive procedure is liver transplant, which costs Rs6.5 million. So far 99 persons have been financially supported to undergo the procedure since 2022. The government spent Rs291.31 million on these procedures. Liver transplant services aren’t available in KP due to which cases are referred to Islamabad and Lahore.

According to statistics, 529 people with damaged kidneys, who were on dialysis for long time, got renal transplants on SCP costing Rs376.75 million to the government. All the patients underwent transplant surgeries at public sector Institute of Kidney Diseases and three private hospitals in Peshawar since 2021 when the renal transplant programme was started on SCP.

Last year, 344 patients got free renal transplant, costing Rs150.26 million. A single case is conducted at Rs1.4 million. Bone marrow transplantation that was approved in 2025 by the government enabled three persons to receive free services at Islamabad-based private hospital at a cost of Rs8.40 million.

The programme also facilities 105 persons, who got cochlear implant. Of them, 31 got services at public sector Hayatabad Medical Complex (HMC) and 74 in Peshawar-based private hospitals. Total cost of these procedures was recorded at Rs262.20 million. Free cochlear implant was approved under SCP in 2025 and benefitted 102 people the same year and three so far in 2026.

The number of transplants might have been up but there was a pause during the interim government, which stopped the programme. For the first time, liver transplant was started in Feb 2022 and it continued till May 2023. It was also put under suspension by the caretaker government.

However, it was resumed in May 2025. Currently, it is conducted only in one Islamabad-based private hospital that has been selected after competition among hospitals that had applied to get empanelled for SCP. The government pays cost of transplants to empanelled hospitals and financially supports post-transplant tests and medicines for one year.

Pre-transplant expenses are not covered in SCP. The government has been giving Rs3 billion per month to State Life Insurance Corporation (SLIC), which implements the programme in all provinces and regions of Azad Jammu and Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan. The government has planned to launch liver and bone marrow transplants in Peshawar to save patients from going to Islamabad.

The patients requiring transplants have to arrange for donors, the nearest family members and undergo certain tests and get approval from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Medical Transplantation Regulatory Authority.

Published in Dawn, February 12th, 2026