PESHAWAR, (MANEND NEWS): Free and subsidised provision of public healthcare service is one of the top welfare initiatives being offered by the government to facilitate the ailing community across the board. Every political government tries to launch special healthcare and service delivery programs for the wellbeing of the masses. In this regard, the former government of KK has launched ‘Sehat Card Plus’ programme under the social protection initiative in December 2015, which had initially covered free medical and surgical treatment of about 50 percent of the province.

Primarily, the programme was launched in Kohat, Mardan, Malakand and Chitral districts wherein as many as 1.8 million poor households (approximately 150 million people) were entitled to get free medical treatment up to Rs540,000 at designated hospitals of the province. Later in February 2019, the programme was extended across the country including all districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in its second phase with a target to provide free treatment including surgeries and medicines up to Rs1 million to each family of over 80 million people at 1000 designated hospitals.

“Treatment under Sehat Card Plus (SCP) continued in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa despite financial constraints and around 9.7 million families were benefited from the incentive costing Rs30 billion expenses in the second phase,” said Riaz Tanoli, Chief Executive Officer, Sehat Cards Plus Program KP while talking to APP. In the first phase, he said that 2.3 million people availed the facility and Rs6 billion were spent on their treatment.

The programme initially covered three per cent of the population in four districts in 2015 and later extended to 51, 70 and 100 per cent population of the province till November 2019 in three different phases respectively, he added. Despite the change of government in KP after dissolution of the provincial assembly, he said, the programme continued unaffected including in the tribal districts and the caretaker government had extended support by releasing funds for the project.