Pending applications of 2025-26 cancelled, patients must apply afresh for grants for seven diseases
Photo: Collected
Patients suffering from cancer, kidney disease, liver cirrhosis, paralysis, heart disease, leukaemia and thalassaemia will have to apply afresh to receive financial assistance.
Those who applied in the 2025-26 financial year but did not receive the money will not have their pending applications transferred automatically to the new financial year; they will have to apply again in the light of the new policy.
The matter was conveyed in a directive issued on 5 October by the Social Safety Net-1 branch of the Ministry of Social Welfare.
According to the directive, the Department of Social Services had proposed that the pending applications in the IDSDP software against which money could not be disbursed under the financial assistance programme for people suffering from the seven mentioned diseases, including cancer, in the 2025-26 financial year be transferred from the district level to the respective upazila units and assistance provided.
But those pending applications of the 2025-26 financial year had been made in the light of the relevant Programme Implementation Policy, 2019.
Meanwhile, for the 2026-27 financial year, the ‘Policy for Implementation of the Financial Assistance Programme for Persons Suffering from Cancer, Kidney Disease, Liver Cirrhosis, Paralysis, Heart Disease, Leukaemia and Thalassaemia, 2026 (revised)’ has been framed, increasing the amount of the grant and the range of diseases covered.
For that reason, the Department of Social Services has been directed to take the necessary steps to disburse the grant money by inviting fresh applications from the patients concerned in the light of the new policy, instead of transferring the pending applications of the previous financial year.
