Islamabad - The Prime Minister National Health Programme (PMNHP) will extend its services to four districts of Sindh and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) in next month, official said on Tuesday.
During June 2017, the programme services will be started for the beneficiaries of districts Hyderabad, Sujawal (Sindh) and Kohat and Mardan (KP).
The PMNHP is one of the heavy budgeted health schemes for which amount has been allocated in next the Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP) 2017-18. Rs3000 million have been allocated for ongoing projects and Rs7,000 in newly proposed projects of Phase-II of the healthcare plan.
Sharing details of the programme, Spokesperson Ministry of National Health Services, Regulations and Coordination (NHS) Sajid Shah said that the programme has so far enrolled 1.076 million families and more than 2,300 individuals have been provided services through it.
“Medical services, including appendectomy to open heart surgeries were provided through 89 empanelled hospitals,” he added.
The programme is working to provide free of cost indoor healthcare services to the families living below poverty line of $2 per day.
To pave a way towards the Universal Health Coverage (UHC), Ministry of NHS is piloting various interventions in the PMNHP and in selected districts.
First pilot intervention is regarding provision of primary the healthcare services to the programme’s beneficiaries. This will be done by developing linkages with WHO’s ‘Family Practice Programme’.
Second pilot intervention is regarding provision of OPD medications to programme’s poor beneficiaries who required long term treatment for 07 non-communicable diseases.
The diseases which are to be focused in this intervention include Heart Failure, Hypertension, Dyslipidemia, Diabetes, breast Cancers, asthma and Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD).
For this pilot, the ministry has recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with a multinational pharmaceutical company. After the successful pilot, these interventions will be incorporated in the regular feature of the programme where cost will be borne through financial pooling mechanism.
The programme is providing its indoor, healthcare services to the enrolled beneficiaries of 16 districts, including Islamabad(ICT), Muzaffarabad, Kotli (AJK), Skardu, Diamer (G-B), Khyber Agency, Bajour Agency (FATA), Rahim Yar Kha, Khanewal, Narowal, Sargodha (Punjab) Quetta, Loralai, Lasbela, Kech (Balochistan) and Thatta (Sindh).
Meanwhile, according to the Pakistan Economic Survey (PES), the package of the programme includes secondary care: Rs50,000 per family per year Priority Diseases: Rs250,000 per family per Year.
Diseases covered under the priority/ tertiary coverage include cardiovascular disease, Diabetes, Burns, HIV/Aids Complication, Cancer, and Road Traffic Accidents.
The programme has been launched in phases in 23 targeted districts during 2016. For monitoring of the programme, a Central Management Information
System (CMIS) has been developed using the technical expertise of NADRA.
