The Punjab government has provided over thirty-seven billion rupees for free medical treatment of patients across a range of specialised health programmes at selected hospitals, a commitment that provincial Health Minister Khawaja Salman Rafique described as historic and foundational. Chairing a meeting on the health sector, the minister said the measures being taken under the Chief Minister’s special health programmes were already cutting patient waiting lists for some of the most serious and expensive conditions a family can face, including adult cardiac care, cancer, dialysis, stroke, paediatric heart surgery and transplants.
The scale of the funding reflects a simple reality about specialised treatment: it is often the care that ordinary families cannot afford on their own. A heart operation, a course of chemotherapy, regular dialysis or a transplant can cost more than a household earns in years. By funding these programmes from the public purse, the Punjab government is arguing that access to life-saving care should not depend on income. The minister’s claim that waiting lists are falling is central to that argument, because a programme that exists on paper but leaves patients waiting for months offers little comfort to someone whose condition cannot wait.
Under the Chief Minister’s Adult Cardiac Surgery Programme, free medical treatment valued at three billion rupees annually is being provided to patients suffering from heart disease. Heart disease remains one of the leading causes of death and disability, and surgery is frequently the only option once a condition has advanced.
Cancer care receives the largest single allocation described at the meeting. Through the Chief Minister’s Special Initiative for Cancer Patients, free services including diagnosis, chemotherapy, radiotherapy and surgical and medical therapies are being provided at an annual cost of ten billion rupees. Cancer treatment is rarely a single procedure; it can stretch over months, involving tests, repeated sessions and follow-up care. Covering the full pathway, rather than only one part of it, is what makes the initiative meaningful, because a free diagnosis followed by unaffordable treatment would still leave a family stranded.
Stroke care is covered by the Chief Minister’s Special Initiative for Stroke Management, under which free medical treatment worth approximately one point two five billion rupees annually is being provided to stroke patients. Stroke is a condition where time matters more than almost anything else: swift treatment can mean the difference between recovery and lasting disability. A dedicated programme signals recognition that emergency care, hospital treatment and follow-up must work as one system, and that patients should not be turned away because they cannot pay at the moment of crisis.
Children are a focus of the provincial effort. The minister noted that under the Chief Minister’s Children’s Heart Surgery Programme, heart surgeries have been performed free of charge for over sixteen thousand eight hundred and fifty-seven children across the province. Behind that number are families who learned, often when a child was very young, that their son or daughter needed an operation on the heart. The programme’s reach, measured in thousands of children rather than dozens, is presented as evidence that the system is working at scale.
Hospitals have also been directed to accelerate further the reduction of waiting lists for adult cardiac care, cancer, dialysis, stroke, paediatric heart surgery and transplants. That direction matters because waiting lists are where policy meets lived experience: a patient told to wait for a transplant or for dialysis knows that delay itself can be dangerous. The minister’s review also covered the administrative affairs and performance of the Nawaz Sharif Cardiology Centre in Murree and the Sahiwal Institute of Cardiology, two institutions at the heart of the province’s cardiac services.
The meeting reviewed the current status of medical equipment and human resources at those hospitals, to ensure the provision of top-tier medical facilities in Punjab’s cardiac hospitals. Punjab Health Secretary Azmat Mahmood stated that measures including the procurement of medical equipment, the deployment of human resources and other foundational initiatives were being taken to ensure excellent medical care in Punjab’s cardiac hospitals.
Khawaja Salman Rafique stated that, in line with the vision of Punjab Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz Sharif, the government is providing state-of-the-art cardiac care to patients. The Nawaz Sharif Cardiology Centre, he said, is proving to be a treatment facility for the people of Murree and its surrounding areas, and for the first time in its history the Punjab government has procured modern machinery worth millions of rupees for the hospital, which now offers patient care through a fully functional catheterisation laboratory. Similarly, the Sahiwal Institute of Cardiology is providing medical care to patients.
The test of the thirty-seven billion rupee commitment will be whether waiting lists keep falling, whether children continue to receive heart surgery without charge, and whether a cancer patient or a stroke patient finds the full pathway of care open to them without a bill at each step. Funding announcements are easy to make; sustained, well-staffed, well-equipped services are harder to build.
