The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare will distribute smart health insurance cards among 30,000 poor families in the first phase under its ‘Health Protection Programme’ to provide modern healthcare services free of cost.
In the light of the Universal Health Coverage of the World Health Organisation (WHO), the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has taken the initiative of the project to ensure healthcare services to all.
Health and Family Welfare Minister Mohammad Nasim will formally inaugurate the programme in three upazilas of Tangail district-Modhupur, Kalihati and Ghatail-on March 24 with distribution of health insurance cards at noon in Kalihati upazila.
The Green Delta Insurance Company has already been recruited as the management farm of the project. A contract in this regard has been signed between the Health Ministry and the Green Delta Insurance Company on December 19 in 2015.
The health insurance cards will be distributed to provide healthcare services to the tune of a maximum Taka 50,000 to one member of each of the families in the three upazilas. The card-holders can avail medicare services for 50 specified complicated diseases from district and upazila level public hospitals.
Md Asadul Islam, director general of the Health Economy Unit, informed BSS that primarily, the card holders will get healthcare services free of cost for 50 diseases including fever, cold, cough, fractured bones, gall bladder, appendicitis, hernia and complicated heart and kidney ailments.
He said that list has already been prepared for distribution of smart health insurance cards among nearly one lakh families in the three upazilas. “We will bring all the deserving people under the project in phases,” Asadul Islam said adding that the health insurance cards will be distributed among the families which live below poverty level and have no houses, land properties and permanent source of income.
About the project, Mohammad Nasim said, “The government is pledge-bound to reach healthcare services to the people’s doorstep. For this reason, the Health Ministry has initiated many projects. At the instruction of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, the health insurance card project has been initiated under its Health Protection Programme at the grassroots level so that the people with abject poverty can be provided with medicare services for complicated diseases free of cost.”
