The Osun State Health Insurance Agency (OSHIA), says it is doing everything it can to attract residents in the informal sector to the scheme.
READ ALSO: Ogun decries low enrollment rate of health insurance
Executive Secretary of the Agency, Dr Razaq Akindele, stated this on Friday, at the first quarterly Service Provider Forum held in Osogbo, the state capital.
Akindele said the agency was exploring possible avenues, including one-on-one and targeted media campaigns, to reach out to the informal sector on benefits of the scheme.
He noted that, as a result of its strategic partnership with the media, in the last three months, about 8,000 residents from the informal sector had been successfully registered by the Agency.
He said, “We are really working hard to get the informal sector to key into the programme. We are using our relationship with the media to let people know the benefits of enrolling into the programme.
“And we have been getting responses. In the last three months, we have had about 8,000 people coming on board.”
The Executive Secretary also explained that retirees from the state civil service who enrolled into the government free insurance scheme would start enjoying its benefits from February this year.
Akindele, who said the state government purposed senior citizens to have access to free medical care, noted that the Agency had been registering them since December last year.
“We started the registration of pensioners in December and we have done that for two months. By February, we want them to start receiving healthcare free of charge. That is the aim of the state government.
“We are going to start their care from first of February, and that is what we have just informed the service providers. So that once the pensioners start coming in, they should start attending to them,” he added.
The OSHIA Executive Secretary further noted that the Agency would soon automate some of its activities to make things easier for service providers and enrollees.
He said the scheme was meant to provide succour to the health challenges of various categories of people in the state, urging residents to take advantage of it in order to reap its benefits.
Comments are closed.