PTI’s ‘healthy’ contribution

The Sehat  Sahulat Programme – commonly known as the health card scheme – is a flagship programme of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government which has brought great relief and sense of protection to millions of families, who hardly make ends meet.

The card provides free of cost medical treatment coverage of up to Rs1 million per family per year at government as well as selected private hospitals. The initiative is widely appreciated by all people. Even the political opponents and critics of Prime Minister Imran Khan could not resist admiring it.

Some analysts believe that the card is the only remarkable achievement of the ruling PTI in its three-and-a-half year reign. Otherwise the PTI government at federal level as well as in the provinces of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (KP) and the Punjab have been plagued with failures and mismanagement.

Some political observers monitoring the electoral politics had attributed the PTI’s victory in the KP in the 2018 general election to the health card, introduced in the province by the party’s first provincial government between 2013 through 2018.

Interestingly, it was the first time in the province’s political history that an incumbent government returned to power for a second consecutive term.

In the 2013 general election, the PTI had won 48 seats and became the single largest party in the province. It had formed a coalition government with the support of the Jamaat-e-Islami, the Qaumi Watan Party and independent candidates.

But to the surprise of many, the PTI had returned victorious in the 2018 elections by winning 66 seats out of 99 seats on which election was held in the province. The party had formed its government, this time without the support of any other political party.

The performance of the PTI after the 2013 election had remained average except for the introduction of the Sehat Sahulat Programme which provided health coverage to almost all the 7.2 million families in the province. It was the health card which had paved the way for the PTI victory in 2018.

The people in the province had greatly benefited from the facility, especially the poor people who could not afford treatment of serious diseases like cancer.

A senior PTI leader who did not want to disclose his identity said even now the party could go into the 2023 general election on the strength of the health card scheme

He said he was otherwise worried by the sky-rocketing prices of essential commodities, joblessness and the government’s failure to deliver on its election promises.

According to the data available with the Bol News, the annual allocation for K-P health card scheme is around Rs18 billion while the total allocation for the scheme – now also available in Punjab and federal areas – is Rs400 billion.

Some insiders in the PTI said after the crushing defeat of the PTI in the recently held local government (LG) elections in the KP, the PTI was contemplating to include Out Patient Department (OPD) treatment in the programme to woo back its voters ahead of the upcoming general election. The Punjab Health Initiative Management Company (PHIMC) has been mandated by the Specialized Health Care and Medical Education Department for execution of the programme in Punjab with the aim to provide free of cost health facilities to the people through micro health insurance scheme.

Currently, an underprivileged population – comprising poor, special and transgender people – in 25 districts of Punjab and all population of 11 districts of Lahore, Dera Ghazi Khan and Sahiwal divisions are eligible to receive healthcare facilities through the card. The government of Punjab intends to provide free health coverage to all the inhabitants of the province in a phased manner by March this year.

The medical superintendent at the Benazir Bhutto Shaheed Hospital Rawalpindi told Bol News that they had established a special counter at the hospital’s emergency department to deal with the patients coming under the programme for a couple of weeks.

“The scheme was formally launched at the facility on January 20 [Thursday],” he added. During the visit to the special counter, the staff deputed there informed Bol News that people are coming to get basic information of the scheme. They said they have already been treating the patients under the scheme for the past few weeks.

The deputy superintendent looking after the Sehat Sahulat Programme counter said: “Right now three patients are getting dialysis at the hospital under the programme.” An elderly lady on a dialysis machine confirmed that she was not charged even a single penny by the hospital and was not made to wait either.

She was satisfied with her treatment and was praying for the longevity of Prime Minister Imran Khan. However, she requested not to be named and also refused to let Bol News take her photograph.

Two other patients including a male and female were also on dialysis machines and were satisfied with the provision of treatment. The medical superintendent said a family could use up to Rs400,000 on priority healthcare facilities while for secondary healthcare facilities they could use up to Rs60,000 per year.

“However, in case of serious illnesses like cancer or hepatitis C or protracted treatment the upper limit of allocation could be extended to up to Rs1 million and even more.” To a question, he said the Sehat Sahulat Programme will provide coverage to only those patients admitted to the hospital on the panel of the insurance company in the district, both in the public and private sector.

The OPD, dentistry, kidney and liver transplants are not covered under the scheme. Even blood transfusion is not covered under the scheme, he clarified.

According to the data available on the website of the Sehat Sahulat Programme – where the complete procedure for getting the facility is also mentioned – some 12 million families enrolled with the scheme.

Some 2. 1 million people had visited the hospitals enrolled with the scheme both in the public and private sector while some 0.64 million people had already been admitted for treatment.

Medical experts hoped that the scheme would gear up in coming days and more and more people would benefit from this facility and get free of cost and quality medical treatment. The critics of the programme also do not deny the efficacy of the pr

ogramme. However, they raise objections to its modus operandi. They say instead of including private sector hospitals in the scheme, the government should focus on the hospitals in the public sector.

Former additional medical superintendent of Holy Family Hospital Dr Tahir Sharif said it is generally noted that the focus of most of the private hospitals is on making money. Besides charging exorbitant prices from the patients, they usually get unnecessary tests done only to increase the patient’s bill.

In the KP, the majority of those using the health card go to private hospitals and only 20% of the patients use the public sector facilities.

According to the figures provided by the provincial health facility, out of Rs10.5 billion used under the programme some Rs8 billion went to private hospitals while on Rs2.5 billion were paid to the public sector hospitals.

“There were complaints in the KP that private hospitals had minted money in the Sehat Sahulat Programme in connivance with the insurance company,” said an official source in the health department.

Giving an example of Rawalpindi, Dr Tahir Sharif said: “We have state of the art hospitals in the city including the Hospital of Urology; Institute of Cardiology and all the three Allied Hospitals – District Headquarters Hospital, Benazir Bhutto Shaheed Hospital and Holy Family Hospital. We can provide quality treatment to patients under the programme at the facilities”.

If the programme is limited to public sector hospitals, the infrastructure at these hospitals will improve as the public money will be spent parsimoniously and not squandered.

The facilities in the private sector could be utilized where unavoidable but if the treatment of some disease is available in public sector hospital preference should be given to the public sector hospital.

Experts said the programme involves a hefty amount of Rs400 billion which can help in transforming the public sector hospitals into state of the art institutions for the collective good of the people of Pakistan.

By and large, the Sehat Sahulat Programme is best of its kind in the given circumstances but room for improvement is always there and it is hoped that the concerned authorities in the health department would fine tune it and remove the lacunas and shortcomings in it for the benefit of people of Pakistan.