‘Ehsaas Tahafuz’ operations lauded

Rawalpindi : To commemorate World Health Day 2021, Dr. Sania Nishtar visited the ‘Ehsaas’ Facilitation Center in Holy Family Hospital (HFH) here Wednesday to appraise operations of the ‘Ehsaas Tahafuz’ that is currently in its pilot phase.

During the course of the visit, Dr. Sania held a meeting with ‘Ehsaas Tahafuz’s’ technical team of medical experts, hospital administrators and programme verifiers, took stock of the progress and gained firsthand insights for programme expansion later this year.

Briefing media after the ‘Tahafuz’ stock take, Dr. Sania shared, “Ehsaas Tahafuz’ is Pakistan’s first shock-oriented precision safety net. The programme is centered on protecting the deserving patients from catastrophic health expenditures. Enhancements are being planned to expand its scale and scope later this year based on lessons of the pilot.” She then continued, “The programme is yielding great results and is being upscaled. This innovative “fund based” approach to health financing is complementing health insurance, to achieve universal health coverage (UHC) in Pakistan, a policy priority of our government to build back better, in a post COVID-19 context.”

‘Ehsaas Tahafuz’ is being implemented in collaboration with HFH to identify patients facing catastrophic health expenditures, who are not covered by ‘Sehat Sahulat’ Card or are in a hospital not registered with ‘Sehat Sahulat’ programme; they are evaluated by the system, and if eligible, are provided funding by allocating donations to the patient. To assist with this, a facilitation desk has also been established at HFH to identify eligible beneficiaries for ‘Tahafuz’ pilot.