The Jhapa Municipality has provided free health insurance to all the destitute chronically ill people with diabetes and high blood pressure. Jayanarayan Sah, chairman of the village municipality, said that the health insurance would be more effective than the idea of distributing free medicine to the long-term sick people of the village last year.
A total of 318 such patients have been identified in the municipality by mobilizing health workers. He said that up to five members of his family had health insurance and insurance cards were also distributed. Sagir Miya, 75, of Ward No. 4, said that he could not get health insurance in the past due to financial constraints.
A parent of five, he suffers from high blood pressure, diabetes and skin diseases. Miya, who has been working as a daily wage earner in another's house, said that she used to buy medicine worth Rs. 500 a month and take it regularly, is happy.
Laxman Bishwakarma, head of the health department of the municipality, said that the health workers sent by the municipality have chosen the family to get health insurance based on the financial condition of the patient, the report of the hospital where he is undergoing treatment and the nature of the disease. "There are a lot of chronically ill people in the municipality but we have selected working and poor families for health insurance," he said.
Man Bahadur Bishwakarma, 58, of ward no. "It is difficult for the poor to procure food in the morning and in the evening. It is not enough to cure them," he said happily. "Our municipality is our government. It worked great with free insurance. ” The cost of going to Bhadrapur or Birtamod for medicines for heart, diabetes and high blood pressure has now been saved, said Vishwakarma.
In the current fiscal year, the municipality had allocated Rs. 1 million in the budget for the purchase of free medicine for high blood pressure and chronic diabetes. Health insurance is provided from the same budget. Chief Administrative Officer of the municipality Khemraj Thapa informed that the details of the patients have been collected through health workers by issuing information from all the wards of the municipality and insurance cards have been distributed to them by insuring them on the basis of the same details.
"This budget is not enough to buy medicine annually," he said. As the details of the insured were collected and insured in November, the card was distributed to them on Sunday by Palika Chairman Jayanarayan Sah.
He said that the insurance will be implemented from this February. He informed that up to Rs. One lakh per family can be spent on annual medicine and treatment through insurance. Tulsa Mishra, 82, and Dhan Bahadur Katuwal, 68, of ward no.
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