'PM’s health programme to cover 100m Pakistanis'

Health minister hints at moving towards ‘cashless’ healthcare access

ISLAMABAD: Provision of quality and affordable health services can help the nation achieve its full potential and gain on the economic and social fronts.

This was stated by the Federal Minister for National Health Services Saira Afzal Tarar while talking to a regional committee meeting of the World Health Organisation (WHO) on good practices on social health protection.

The regional committee - the highest governing body of WHO on the regional level - is being held in Pakistan for the first time. The 64th Session of Regional Committee for the Eastern Mediterranean had been inaugurated by the president on Monday.

At Tuesday’s session, Tarar briefed the delegates about the Prime Minister’s Health Insurance Programme.  She said that the government believes unless the poorest of the poor are not reached with a comprehensive package of curative health services - available in both the public and private spheres for free- we will not be able to achieve the goal of providing universal health coverage to this highly vulnerable segment of the society.

The National Health Programme, the health minister said, plans to provide free health insurance to families living below poverty line and access quality indoor health care services from empanelled health care facilities in the first phase.

“I am pleased to announce that we have started implementing the programmes and nowadays are working on taking the programme to its next phase,” Tarar said.

She added that the programme will eventually focus on serving around 100 million Pakistanis.

“This will indeed be the real revolution when people get treatment for different ailments free of cost from the best public or private health facilities. I am confident that this revolution in the health sector will go a long way in turning around the state of health in the country and improve our indicators,” she hoped.

Moreover, she hoped that once fully implemented, the programme will prove to be a major step in poverty alleviation by reducing the financial barriers to quality healthcare services.

The minister said they were piloting multiple innovative programmes which will see beneficiaries receive services for high-burden diseases, which were not included in the current phase of the programme.

“Through these pilot programmes, we are not only developing linkages with already existing in primary healthcare services but also bringing in outpatient services in the programme.”

She also hinted towards certain future features of the plan noting that they wanted to work towards providing “cashless quality health access to all regardless of their social economic status, race and gender”.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 11^th, 2017.