NHIS committed to enrolling all Nigerians into Health Insurance Scheme- Prof. Sambo

The Executive Secretary, National Health Insurance Scheme, NHIS, in Nigeria, Prof. Mohammed Sambo has hinted that the task before the scheme is to get the entire Nigerians populace registered into the scheme.

Professor Sambo who made this known in Kaduna during an interactive section with health correspondents, said that the populace are interested in what insurance is and how they will benefit from it.

Sambo also announced that the scheme is presently doing massive enrolment of Nigerians in its system in order to ensure universal coverage of all, adding that the enrolment has to do with accreditation of healthcare facilities, quality insurance, payment system where people pay money to the healthcare organisation and to the healthcare facilities as well.

He noted that with the massive enrolment, it will be easy to implement UHC and track where there is any problem as it will enable the scheme to provide solutions if any situation arises.

“But if we go on doing it manually, the attainment of health insurance universal health coverage as prescribed by Sustainable Development Goal (SDG), would elude the country”, the Executive Secretary hinted.

The NHIS Boss said that with the 21st century in which the entire global community is talking about e-governance, the NHIS is proceeding with the e-governance, stressing that the Scheme has to do with massive enrolment of people all over the country.

“Therefore, we need to closely engage with the media so that Nigerians understand the agency’s philosophy of the Scheme and to understand the mechanism of action of the NHIS so that they accurately inform, educate and communicate to the people to join the scheme as one of the key issues in the development agenda which is in line with the present administration,”  he pointed out.

The NHIS boss said that the scheme has taken time to get desk officers to properly understand the Scheme from the root so that whenever they are reporting, they report correctly and accurately being the beginning of a strategic engagement.

According to him, “We want to create a platform where we will be sending information to the desk officers directly on every event that we are undertaking and any success and problem that we have recorded for the purpose of correction”.

Prof. Sambo further announced plans by the Scheme to enroll members of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC), in the Scheme, saying that, under the platform of the Scheme’s “Universal Health Coverage Matrix”, it has been able to map all Nigerians including the members of the NYSC.

Prof Sambo also said that the NHIS has been engaging with the NYSC to ensure that the NYSC members are covered in the framework in the National Insurance Scheme.

He explained that there is a Presidential directive that the NYSC members should be covered, pointing out that over the years, there was no budgetary provision for such.

The NHIS boss explained that discussion between the NHIS and NYSC as well as the Budget Office of the Federal Ministry of Health has gone far towards ensuring adequate release of fund to cover the NYSC members.

Prof Sambo urged the media to pass the right and useful information that will benefit the people at the rural communities and  protect them from catastrophic health challenges.