Government facilities have so far received 260k beneficiaries of the Sehat Insaf Card.
PESHAWAR: The Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa government has increased the Sehat Insaf Card program with an additional 3 billion rupees bringing the total fund allocation to 10.5 billion rupees.
However, Finance Advisor Muzamil Aslam revealed on August 11 that these funds were additional and aimed at enhancing healthcare services and providing free drugs.
Over the past five months, the health card scheme has treated 363,000 patients while another 104,000 used Sehat Card Plus at private hospitals.
In addition, Aslam indicated that monthly spending on health cards by the government had been raised to Rs 2 billion thereby leading to improved service delivery quality and a shift from private to public hospitals.
Government facilities have so far received 260k beneficiaries of the Sehat Insaf Card.
Additionally, the finance advisor pushed back against claims that his province was financially troubled saying that CM Sardar Ali Amin Khan Gandapur and Chairman Imran Khan are committed to public service through their administration.
He further stated that there would be more positive changes ahead for the province.
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In addition, the government has released 110m Rupees in reserved funds for critical disease treatment under the Sehat Insaf Card program after a one-year pause.
Moreover, this year’s allocation of Rs 3 billion for the Sehat Insaf Card program is significantly lower than in previous years. Initially, it only covered three ailments after being heavily affected by budgetary cuts during the interim period.
However, notwithstanding its resumption by the PTI government in March, the reserved funds have remained stagnant.
At present, the KP government has released Rs5 billion to the insurance company but payments to date amount to Rs16 billion leaving an outstanding liability of Rs9 billion.
Other recent releases include a sum of Rs3 billion for treatments in June and July and a reserved fund of 110 million Rupees that still needs more support for patients diagnosed with kidney failure or cancer.
