LAHORE: Each family in Punjab will get free health card by the end of this year which will offer health coverage of up to Rs1 million per family. Punjab Law and Cooperatives Minister Raja Basharat disclosed this while addressing a meeting here on Tuesday.

Punjab Health Minister Dr Yasmeen Rashid, Punjab Finance Minister Hashim Javan Bakht, the Planning and Development Board Chairman, Punjab Specialized Health Secretary, Punjab Finance Secretary, Punjab Law Secretary and other officials were also present on the occasion. The meeting considered various models for providing free health insurance to every family in Punjab.

The Law Minister said that the Punjab government wants to ensure provision of health cards, which is an important step towards Prime Minister Imran Khan’s vision for the state of Madina. “Under this programme, Sahiwal and DG Khan will get the cards by April while other divisions will get it by December,” he added.

The Finance Minister said that the department of health should sign a contract with concerned agency for health insurance for at least three years so that the scheme would be able to work on a sustainable basis. The Secretary Specialized Health said in the briefing that last year, out of 5.2 million registered people in the province, 136,000 benefited from the health card.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2021