PESHAWAR: Thousands of poor patients are suffering as they can’t afford to go to hospitals for urgently needed surgeries as the State Life Insurance Corporation has suspended free health services under the Sehat Card Plus Programme apparently due to failure of caretaker Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government.
According to officials of the Health Department, the caretaker government has violated the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Universal Health Coverage Act 2022 by suspending all services under the Sehat Card Plus programme. “If someone went to the court, those who suspended the health services under the Sehat Card Plus could face serious problems as they had violated the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Universal Health Coverage Act 2022,” an official of the Health Department told The News on condition of anonymity.
This is the fifth time during the caretaker government, headed by the elderly Chief Minister Mohammad Azam Khan that Sehat card services have been suspended due to inability of the government to clear dues of the insurance company.
Previously the services would suspend for two or three days but this time the free health services have been suspended since October 17. According to senior officials of the Health Department, the government had committed to pay Rs4 billion to the insurance company in the first week of November to get the services restored.
“This is what we heard last week that the Finance Department will pay Rs4 billion to the insurance company to restore services. I don’t know why the amount wasn’t paid last week,” an official of the Health Department said.
Pleading anonymity, he said that except for the cancer and dialysis treatment, all other services under the Sehat Card Plus were presently stopped. Sehat card has become a basic need for the majority of the population in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
According to official sources, 75 percent of the people in KP can’t afford to pay for the small treatment and surgery such as tonsils or appendix due to extreme poverty and it was sehat card that enabled them to get their treatment done free of charge.
The government needs to clear more than Rs30 billion dues of the insurance company. The suspension of sehat card services has brought miseries to patients suffering from multiple types of diseases.
Besides other patients, cardiac patients proved to be the biggest sufferers as all hospitals had stopped primary percutaneous coronary intervention or primary PCI procedures after suspension of the free health services.
Three majority tertiary care hospitals- Peshawar Institute of Cardiology (PIC), the Lady Reading Hospital (LRH) and Hayatabad Medical Complex (HMC) had started primary PCI services and saved lives of thousands of patients brought to them during heart attack.
“We attend hundreds of cardiac patients in the hospital OPDs and our private clinics and suggest angiography to a number of patients but most of them cannot afford its cost, around Rs20000,” a senior cardiologist at the Hayatabad Medical Complex (HMC) told The News.
He said the patients preferred to wait for restoration of sehat card services when they were advised to have angiographies, as they can’t afford its cost.
“And another shocking fact is that the majority of the patients can’t afford the cost of their cardiac surgeries. Sehat card used to be a blessing for them as they are anxiously waiting for the free services to be resumed so they can get their surgeries done otherwise they will die,” said the cardiologist.
The KP has been suffering from financial difficulties and failed to provide funds to the insurance company and hospitals for stipends of their employees.The PTI government had initiated two flagship projects, i.e. Sehat Card Plus Programme, known as sehat card, and granting financial and administrative autonomy to 10 tertiary care hospitals of the province under the Medical Teaching Institution Reforms Act 2015.
The government launched free health services in the province in 2016 and extended it to 100 percent population of the province in 2019-2020. It helped thousands of patients to seek free treatment.
There are more than one million families registered with sehat card, 86 percent of them were reportedly unable to afford the cost of their treatment.
Also, the caretaker government has excluded 35 percent of the people from the sehat card services, believing that their financial status was sound and were able to contribute to their treatment.
When reached, Prof Dr Riaz Anwar, Adviser to Chief Minister on Health, told The News that he was very upset for the poor patients who were unable to seek free treatment following suspension of sehat card, adding that he was working on it and would soon resolve this issue.
“We had held an important meeting with the chief minister where senior officials of the insurance company were also present. They promised us to continue their services and we would pay them regularly but they later suspended their services that caused problems to the patients,” he said.
Dr Riaz Anwar said he was aware of the poor economic condition of KP and its people therefore he was constantly trying to find an amicable solution to this issue.
