Special Assistant to Prime Minister on Health Dr Faisal Sultan has said that the scope of the Sehat Sahulat programme has been extended to the entire country.
Chairing a meeting on the Sehat Sahulat programme in Islamabad, Dr Sultan said it is a revolutionary initiative of the present government, according to Radio Pakistan. Nineteen million families have been availing free medical facilities in the form of health cards in the country, the SAPM further said.
Dr Sultan maintained that the Sehat Sahulat facility is being provided to the people of erstwhile FATA, Tharparkar, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK), Azad Kashmir, and Punjab. He added that the facility provides free medical treatment through health cards under Universal Health Coverage.
The SAPM further said that all the permanent residents of Islamabad and Gilgit-Baltistan will get health cards from January next year.
Sehat Sahulat initiative
As part of its poverty alleviation drive across Pakistan’s poorest districts, the PTI government launched the Sehat Insaf Card programme across the country to provide access to quality healthcare to citizens.
Prime Minister Imran Khan directed the federal and provincial governments to take measures to provide the people with maximum benefits of the federal government’s Sehat Sahulat Card programme.
Sehat Sahulat Programme: Over 230m families in Punjab, ICT to have access
Terming the programme a historic initiative in the health sector of the country, the PM said that it is for the first time that a government had launched a comprehensive health project to facilitate the weakest segments of society.
The first phase of the programme was launched in KPK in 2015 that covered three percent of the population (100,000 families in four districts) of the province.
In 2016, the programme was then extended to 51 percent of the population (1,791,930 people in all districts) of KP in the second phase. The third phase of the programme was started in 2017, covering 64 percent of the population (3,200,000 families).
The health card catered to the treatment of 26 diseases, including expensive cardiac treatment. In Punjab, around 8.5 million households had been given health cards.