Every family in Punjab to have health cards by year-end: Basharat

LAHORE:Provincial Minister for Law and Cooperatives Raja Basharat has said the Punjab government wants to ensure provision of health cards to every family in the current year, which is an important step towards Prime Minister Imran Khan's vision for the state of Madina.

He stated this while chairing a meeting at Chief Minister's House on Tuesday. Provincial Health Minister Dr Yasmin Rashid, Provincial Finance Minister Hashim Javan Bakht, P&D chairman and the secretary of departments of specialised healthcare and finance and law were also present on the occasion.

The meeting considered various models for providing free health insurance to every family in Punjab. Raja Basharat said that according to the plan, health insurance of up to Rs1 million would be provided to each family. He said that under the programme, Sahiwal and DG Khan till April and all citizens of other divisions till December would be facilitated. The law minister said that this was a huge welfare scheme which would benefit every person of the province and Chief Minister Sardar Usman Buzdar was taking personal interest in its success. Meanwhile, the finance minister said that the Health Department should sign a contract with the agency concerned for health insurance for at least three years so that the scheme would be able to work on a sustainable basis. During briefing, the specialised healthcare secretary said out of 5.2 million registered people in the province, 136,000 benefited from the health card last year.