UNICEF demands improved funding of health Insurance

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has asked the federal and state governments to increase funding of the health insurance scheme with a view to enrolling more vulnerable persons across the country.

UNICEF health specialist at Lagos field office, Dr Ijeoma Agbo, made the call in Ibadan, Oyo State, at a two-day media dialogue on “Changing the narrative on child mortality through health insurance.”

The dialogue was jointly organized by UNICEF and the Oyo State Health Insurance Agency (OYSHIA) for journalists drawn from South West states.

Agbo noted that the National Health Insurance Act (NHIA) and states’ agencies made health insurance mandatory for all citizens, adding that there was a need to improve funding in order to capture the vulnerable including pregnant women, children, the elderly among others.

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According to her, good health is a human right and everyone should have access to good and quality health care services when they need it.

Agbo said, “We would like to commend the government because when it comes to enabling policies we have that in place. The National Health Insurance Act (NHIA) which was brought into law in 2022 which talks about the fact that health insurance is mandatory for all citizens in Nigeria.

“It also put in place the fact that every state has a state health insurance scheme, we can see that our 36 states and the FCT all have that in place. It also talks about the vulnerable fund, which is one percent of the consolidated revenue that comes to state going towards paying premium for our vulnerable persons, we have had our governments putting this down, but we all know that it has not been put down as it should be regularly, so this is a call out for government to actually prioritise this fund towards ensuring that our vulnerable person’s get enrolled on the health insurance scheme.

“Good health is a human right and everyone should have access to good and quality health care services when they need it and one thing that is important is that while doing this no one should have to go into extreme poverty paying for health care that is what we call out of pocket payment.”

On his part, the Executive Secretary of OYSHIA, Dr. Olusola Akande, emphasised the need to enforce the health insurance scheme in order to upscale more enrollment.

“The first thing that I think we should do is to enforce the mandatoriness of the insurance in Nigeria, if we can get that done, it becomes an easier task,” Akande said.