The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) government is set to sign agreements with two private hospitals for providing free liver transplants to the citizens of the province under the Sehat Sahulat Program (SSP), PTI’s flagship universal healthcare initiative.
The provincial government is also working hard to take Shaukat Khanum Memorial Cancer Hospital (SKMCH) onboard for providing free treatment to the citizens for all kinds of cancer under the SSP.
Speaking to the media in this regard, a spokesman for KP’s Health Ministry said that the Ministry will enter agreements with two private hospitals, one each in Islamabad and Lahore, for providing free liver transplants to the citizens.
The Ministry is now working to finalize the details of both the agreements and once these agreements are in place, patients with a damaged liver would be able to get a free transplant without having to worry about financing the operation.
The spokesman further said that the Ministry is making efforts to expand the SSP to SKMCH to provide free cancer treatment to the citizens of the province.
SKMCH has strict criteria regarding the selection of patients for free cancer treatment. However, the Ministry has requested it to relax it so that agreement for providing free cancer treatment could be signed.
About SSP
The PTI’s provincial government launched the SSP in collaboration with KfW, a state-owned German bank, in 2015.
Under SSP, KP’s citizens are entitled to free treatment at more than 500 hospitals on the panel of SSP across the country. Each family registered with the SSP is eligible for free treatment worth up to Rs. 1 million annually.
Since 2015, more than 6 million patients have received a wide range of free treatments worth Rs. 16 billion at different hospitals across the country.
The PTI-led federal government has also launched SSP in Punjab, Balochistan, parts of Sindh, AJK, and GB.
