Health coverage lags 22% on target

Three years before a target to reach 30% of Nigerians with health insurance cover, only eight out of every 100 Nigerians have any sort of health cover, health minister Onyebuchi Chukwu admitted. He suggested that the National Health Insurance Scheme, which administers social insurance in the country, adopt “aggressive marketing” to push its health products […]

Three years before a target to reach 30% of Nigerians with health insurance cover, only eight out of every 100 Nigerians have any sort of health cover, health minister Onyebuchi Chukwu admitted.

He suggested that the National Health Insurance Scheme, which administers social insurance in the country, adopt “aggressive marketing” to push its health products nationwide.

Chukwu, while inaugurating governing boards for five health agencies and hospitals in Abuja, said the Presidency has a set target to reach 30% of Nigerians with health coverage by the end of 2015.

“At the end of 2012, we have recorded eight percent,” he admitted, mostly through the launch of community-based social health insurance and voluntary contributions, which NHIS has pushed in previous times.

“Aggressive marketing”

“Meeting target will require aggressive marketing of various products of NHIS,” he told members of newly inaugurated governing board of NHIS. Present laws allow voluntary purchase of health cover, though legislation to make health cover mandatory is under consideration.

Among para-state agencies with newly inaugurated boards are:
NHIS, National Institute for Medical Research (NIMR)
National Eye Centre (NEC)

National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA)
National Institute for Pharmaceutical Research and Development (NIPRD), which has a traditional medicine practitioner on its board.

“Arrow head”

NHIS and NPHCDA are expected to lead efforts to deepen the reach of basic health care, as well as strengthen efforts to eradicate poliomyelitis in the country.

A separate collaboration between the primary healthcare agency and the Nigerian Centre for Disease Control will target what Chukwu called “the polio front” but also consider the role of environmental sanitation to keeping communities polio free as herd immunity [the result of continued immunisation of communities over time] continues to increase.

“Many states have not recorded a single case, but they stand in danger of suffering a reversal if we do not do something about it,” he said.

Borno state last week reported 14 new cases of polio, calling it the largest discovery in recent times.