Doctors, health experts will deliver sessions at colleges, varsities public places about the health facilities under the program
Javed Khan
PESHAWAR: Khyber Pakhtunkhwa health department is all set to launch a massive campaign to raise general awareness among the masses regarding easy access to free health facilities under the health card plus program at designated public and private sector hospitals.
Sources said that the campaign has been designed to make the public aware of how to utilize health card facilities at those hospitals falls in the ambit of designated health card plus system.
Sources said that doctors and other health professionals working under the health directorate, health care commission, and those associated with major hospitals will hold sessions at government colleges, varsities, and other public places to inform the common people regarding the proper utilization of health care coverage.
awareness sessions have been started in some parts of district Chitral they said.
The government has also planned to establish a digital health card window or desk in every hospital to help to implement the provision of health care to everyone visiting the hospitals and share its detail with hospital authority. Once you visit a hospital for any type of ailment cure your profile will be shared with the health department.
For a patient who has a health card and visits a hospital for treatment, the concerned hospital according to its capacity will be bound to provide him or her all the required treatment and medicines free of cost.
Hospitals, where free medicine stores are not available or running short of medicines, have been asked to set-up medical stores either from their own resources or involve private sector contractors, however, the government will provide funds to private contractors for the delivery of medicines.
Under the Sehat Card Plus health coverage program, each family will receive health facilities of Rs1 million per year. Both public and private hospitals registered by the program will provide free treatment to residents of the province. The provincial government has selected State Life Insurance Corporation for the health coverage and under the agreement, the government will pay Rs2,849 per family annually.
The program of free health coverage has already begun for the residents of Swat, Bunner, Dir, Upper and Lower, Shangla, Malakand, Chitral Upper, and Chitral Lower and Bajaur districts of Malakand division last week and will extend to other parts of the province in January 2021.
According to the health department, around 60 lakh families of the province will be provided with free health insurance under the Sehat Card Plus program.
