EDITORIAL: It seems you can always count on the crooked and the corrupt to hijack and subvert the few pro-people policies that are rolled out in this Islamic republic; that too for the express purpose of adding to their mountains of illegitimate wealth.
Unfortunately, the Sehat Sahulat Programme (SSP), which has and continues to benefit millions of people who simply lack the resources for proper medical care, is no exception. Shocking revelations by the Punjab government indicate that this facility has been milked for all its worth in all the wrong ways possible.
There are tales of doctors implanting up to three stents in cardiac patients where only one was required, of private hospitals performing 48 surgeries in a single day, and also of a stunning, above 50 percent conversion rate of normal deliveries into C-section cases in expecting mothers in some private hospitals.
There is also a case where a private hospital generated a Rs 900 million bill for treatment provided to eligible patients for a few specific diseases, which regulators failed to red flag at the time. This way a scheme designed to benefit the very bottom of the food chain has been used to exploit the most vulnerable segments of society by a mafia that, apparently, can never have enough black money to get out of the game.
This is a crying shame. Pakistan already suffers endlessly because of its extremely high population and poverty rates, extremely low literacy rate, and a medical system that is not both inadequate and too expensive to provide proper coverage to a big part of the population.
That is why SSP was hailed as such a game changer. Yet it turns out that the lure of easily available free wealth, however illegal, can easily wash away the sanctity of the Hippocratic oath that medical professionals are supposed to hold dearer than everything else.
Something must also be said about authorities that were either asleep at the wheel or comfortably complicit in this epic fraud. It is surprising that so much money was doled out with so few checks and balances and a monitoring system that clearly failed very badly.
Someone should also explain why nobody was bothered when ridiculous trends of malpractice were so glaringly visible. There should be a thorough investigation, needless to say, and all those found guilty of malpractice, corruption and collusion should be delivered severe punishments.
Punjab’s caretaker government, for its part, should be credited for highlighting a severe violation of the law that went unnoticed under an elected dispensation. It has made the correct decision of restricting this precious programme to people who truly deserve it, pushing the typical leeches that feed on public finances when they can pay their own bills many times over out of it. It has also made separate allocations for a reserve fund of Rs 1.5 billion to extend healthcare facilities to people who are not accommodated by SSP – another welcome step.
There were worrying reports that the whole program might be disbanded because of these issues. Gladly, that is not true and the Punjab government has categorically denied all such claims. Yet while it fine-tunes this initiative, it must keep in mind that the best way to protect and nurture it is to remove all the rot from it first.
And that will require prompt and full force of the law. This sort of corruption thrives only as long as it is allowed to. With a proper monitoring and evaluation system, it should not be too hard to make it clean and efficient once again.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2023
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