Only one hospital bed is available for 1,580 persons, one doctor for 957 persons and one dentist for 9,730 persons in the country while the government claims that investment in health over the years has seen improvement in health facilities. This was revealed in the Pakistan Economic Survey 2017-18 launched by the Special Advsior to the Prime Minister on Finance, Revenue and Economic Reforms on Thursday.
Data available for July-February 2017 shows there were 12.1 million basic health units (BHUs), 676 rural health centers (RHCs) and 5,697 dispensaries while the total number of doctors, dentists and nurses is 208,007, 20,463 and 103,777 respectively.
The cumulative health expenditures of federal and the provinces are projected at Rs 384.57 billion for 2017-18 which is 31.75 percent higher than the actual expenditures of R s291.90 billion realized during fiscal year 2016-17, it says.
In July-February 2017-18 disbursements for health were only 43.5 percent of the budgeted amount or a total Rs 167.16 billion against Rs 121.57 billion in the comparable period of 2016-17.
According to the break-up of federal and provincial share in total public spending on health during July-February 2017-18, the major share of spending was in Punjab (84.8 percent) followed by Sindh (41.4 percent), Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (17.6 percent) and Balochistan (11.3 percent).
Prime Minister Health Programme was launched initially in 23 districts and under Phase-II, the services have been expanded to 40 districts to cover 14 million families.
Under this programme provision of free of cost health insurance was provided to 3.2 million families living below poverty line of $2 per day eligible to access cashless health care services package of 0.3 million rupees per family per year in both public and private sector through a health card issued by a highly transparent mechanism available in Punjab, Balochistan and FATA in its two phases. The funding for the programme is being provided by the federal and provincial governments.
A total amount of Rs 15 billion was allocated in PSDP 2017-18 for the two phases of the programme and as of January 31, 2018 more than 1,655,657 families have been enrolled in Prime Minister's National Health Programme and more than 56,000 families have been treated for various illnesses from 125 empanelled hospitals across Pakistan.