ISLAMABAD: The Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP) has decided to expand the insurance coverage to its beneficiaries.

The ‘Waseela-e-Sehat’ initiative comprises group life and health insurance coverage to the beneficiary families. It is one of the major initiatives of the BISP which would impact the government’s social protection programme and poverty alleviation strategies.

The BISP aims to establish an effective social safety net for its beneficiaries and ‘Waseela-e-Sehat’ is said to be a major step in that direction. The programme would expand this initiative in phases with help from national and international partners.

The pilot phase of health insurance was launched in Faisalabad in April 2012 and about 59,000 beneficiary families, covering 400,000 people, were enrolled in the programme with eight hospitals on the panel.

In the past two years, about 10,000 patients utilised the facility, while 2,600 patients admitted to hospitals, out of which 1,600 were medical cases, 1,000 surgical patients and majority related to maternal and child healthcare.

The BISP had announced that the programme was directly contributing to the attainment of the millennium development goals related to child and maternal health.

The group life insurance was started by providing cover to breadwinners of a BISP beneficiary with around 4.1 million enrolled in the country. Around 15,000 deaths have been reported so far, with next of kin of more than 9,000 families paid Rs100,000 each by the State Life Insurance Corporation. The remaining cases are under process and would soon be cleared.