By; ALEX UANGBAOJE, Kaduna
Stakeholders in Kaduna State health sector on Friday, emphasised that for the state health insurance scheme to work effectively, there’s need to have a quality healthcare delivery system in place.
They observed that the major issue militating against the targeted enrolment of residents is the poor citizens trust in government programmes and absence of a clear-cut informal sector enrolment strategy.
These observations were made in Zaria, during a two-day strategic stakeholders engagement on the enrolment of the informal sector in Kaduna State organized by the State Contributory Health Management Authority (KADCHMA) in collaboration with the Kaduna Maternal Accountability Mechanism (KADMAM) with support from Save the Children International (SCI).
They noted that the insurance agency needs to increase their ability to enlighten members of the public, adding that by the time people understand the role of the agency and the importance of the scheme, the issue of trust would would have been dealt with.
The group advised the agency to take advantage of the use of worship centres across the state to expand her sensitization while also using their existing strategies.
“Until services are fully available where people don’t need to pay extra money after paying for the scheme, trust will remain an issue and if people gets quality services there would be no need for spending too much money on sensitization.” They added.
Responding, the Director General of KADCHMA, Abubakar Hassan, said the authority is working to hit a target of nine million enrollees.
He said so far, majority of enrollees are those in the state government’s payroll, while those in the informal sector that formed the majority of residents are yet to join.
This according to him was the reason for bringing various informal sector stakeholders together to help chat the way forward on how to get them into the scheme.
Abubakar revealed that part of the authority’s strategy to increase the enrolment is the plan to go into arrangements with different organised unions in the state.
“I’m glad to inform you that in few days from now, we will be signing an MoU with the Nigerian Union of Pensioners that would bring more than 16,000 people into the scheme.” The DG said.
He therefore, urged stakeholders to support the agency to enlighten the public about the scheme, calling on privileged people in the society to help those that can not afford the scheme to insure their health.
In his opening remarks, Advocacy and Communication Coordinator, Gates grant, Save the Children, Abdulrahma Mikail, said his organisation’s concern is to ensure that Kaduna places Universal Health Coverage as a top priority.
“We believe that if we do this everybody will be well covered and to achieve this means that we have to bring the informal sector which constitutes the largest chunk of the population on board.” He noted.
On his part, the Co-chair of KADMAM, Isa Gidado, noted that the brainstorming session for participants to support KADCHMA in unpacking the informal sector strategy for stakeholders to key into the informal sector enrolment on the KCHS became imperative following the low enrolment which he said is a far cry from meeting the minimum Universal Health Coverage target for the state.
The ongoing two days meeting is aimed at improving the quality of health services in the state with particular reference to the Contributory Health Scheme.
To acquaint the participants with the KADCHMA informal sector enrolment strategy, chatt the best way on the strategy implementation at the community level.
Promote joint accountability and responsive feedback on service delivery to enrolees by KADHCMA accredited public and private health facilities and agree on next steps for the strategy implementation with timelines.
