The Bole District office of the National Health Insurance Authority NHIA has held a day’s stakeholders meeting in Bole on Friday July 29, 2022.
The meeting which was on the theme: ‘Achieving Universal Health Coverage, the role of stakeholders,’ provided a unique opportunity for stakeholders to fashion a common effective response to the challenges identified with the scheme.
The Bole District Director of NHIA, Mr. Mohammed Shiraz-Deen, said government in a bid to expand coverage of the scheme and to cover more of the poor and vulnerable in society has decided to enroll all school children currently enjoying the School Feeding Programme and all Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty LEAP beneficiaries onto the scheme free of charge.
He stressed the importance of the scheme to quality healthcare delivery.
According to the District Manager, the National Health Insurance Authority, NHIA in the Bole enclave of the Savannah had achieved its target for 2021.
He said the District was given a target to register active membership of over 60,679 for the year 2021 but has exceeded that target by 72,261 .
According to him some pragmatic measures were put in place to ensure that the target for the year is achieved.
“We have a target nationally of trying to achieve the universal health coverage and in achieving this targets the NHIA head office gave us a target of registering active membership of over 60,679 by the end of 2021. But at the end of 2021, we have been able to exceed our target by 72,261. We have also set up pragmatic steps to ensure that majority of people in the Bole enclave are registered with the scheme,” District Manager for the scheme Mohammed Shiraz-Deen stated.
According to the District Manager, they were able to achieve their target as a result of some action plan implemented, adding that the pragmatic steps have paid off.
Mr. Shiraz-Deen took the gathering through facility attendance and cost, the claims administration process, challenges, and some proposed remedies.
He enumerated some of the problems facing the scheme as: network disruptions, falsification of claims, as well as difficulty in reaching most communities.
He proposed that the Assembly should liaise with the Telecommunication networks to widen their coverage and also urged the Assembly to work on some of the feeder roads and also proposed that a medical store be put up in the Savannah Region to help remedy some of the challenges facing his outfit.
Stakeholders were drawn from the Ghana Health Service, Ghana Education Service, the Department of Social Welfare and Community Development, the National Commission on Civic Education, the Information Services Department and some selected Assembly Members.
Source: yagbonradioonline
