PESHAWAR, FEB 21 /DNA/: Only 15 transgender persons have availed free treatment on Sehat Card Plus in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa last year despite having entitlement.
A total of 4.86 million people have received cashless healthcare services, including only 15 transgender persons, according to data. The data shows that 10.6 million families (30 million individuals) have been registered with Nadra and are eligible for free diagnosis and treatment services under the scheme.
Of the registered people, 54 per cent are men and 46 per cent are women but the number of registered transgender persons is only 0.001 per cent. Among those, who have received treatment services on SCP, 54 per cent are women, 46 per cent are men and 0.0003 per cent of them are transgender persons.
The free health insurance programme, launched in 2016, has benefitted five million people of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa at a cost of Rs136 billion.
Officials in health department said that transgender persons wanted to be called women and therefore they did not want to register themselves as transgender. Nadra has registered only 183 transgender persons so far and 15 of them have availed free medical services on SCP.
“They want to seek free treatment as women for which there is no ban on them because each and every citizen of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa possessing national identity card is entitled to these services on SCP in all empanelled hospitals,” they said.
Qamar Naseem, the programme manager of Blue Vein, a non-governmental organisation, told Dawn that there were multiple reasons due to which transgender persons were reluctant to get registered with Nadra for free treatment scheme.
“It is very disappointing that despite all the efforts by civil society and Nadra and the facilitation by social welfare and women empowerment department, transgender persons are not registering themselves,” he said.
He said that one of the reason stated during meetings with transgender persons was pressure from family. Being married and having children, they wouldn’t be able to travel to Gulf states in addition to complex procedures for changing their identities in all documentations including banking, inheritance, ownership, school or college certificates, jobs and other areas, he added.
Qamar Naseem, who has been working on rights and issues of transgender persons in the province, said that some of the transgender persons said that they got no benefit, and therefore they would not register themselves with Nadra.
According to TransAction Alliance for Transgender, their number is around 45,000 but no data is available to confirm it. Transgender Protection Policy is in the last stages, but the law department has yet to approve it.
Officials in health department said that government had already announced certain benefits for transgender persons to ensure their effective treatment in hospitals. Transgender persons often complained that they faced violence and stigma in hospitals due to which they avoided visiting health facilities even if they had serious illnesses, they added.
Health department has directed hospitals in the province to allocate dedicated wards, toilets and other facilities to transgender persons to ensure ‘their dignity and privacy during treatment.’
Officials said that they had directed hospital medical superintendents and district health officers in that regard but transgender persons were not visiting hospitals to avail the facilities announced by the department for them.
They said that transgender persons had already been covered by SCP, so they could get free treatment in designated public and private hospitals. The premium amount for transgender persons was paid by social welfare and women empowerment department, they added.
