The Executive Secretary, National Health Insurance Scheme, Dr. Femi Thomas, has said that the inauguration of the NHIS school programme will soon take place in the country.
He told the News Agency of Nigeria in Abuja on Thursday that the programme would enable primary and secondary school pupils aged between six and 12 to benefit from NHIS services.
Thomas said the school programme would add about 24 million enrolments to beneficiaries of the NHIS.
He noted that plans were also on to include students of tertiary institutions into the scheme, saying this would help to fast track the objective of achieving access to health care in the country.
He said, "Children in primary schools will be treated free. It is our hope that the free health programme will enlist 14 million children nationwide."
The executive secretary, who decried the patronage the scheme so far received in the country, called on Nigerians to enrol for health insurance.
He said the Federal Government had spent over N1bn on the scheme for promoting maternal and child health in order to reduce unnecessary deaths.
The Federal Government, he added, established the scheme due to the alarming number of deaths among children.
According to him, the incessant deaths among children have become a recurring decimal, as about 39,000 women died before the NHIS intervention.
He said, "Hospital is beyond the reach of women, especially in rural areas and some do not have access to drugs; hence the government directed that women and children under five years be treated where such programmes exist."
He also urged other Nigerians to embrace the scheme, saying it offered the best protection on health issues.
He said that 12 out of the 36 states of the federation had embraced community-based health insurance programme, adding that efforts were on to encourage other states to key into it.
Thomas said 33,000 pregnant women had benefited from the scheme’s maternal/ newborn and child health programme in the first quarter of 2014, as opposed to the 11,000 that benefited in 2013.
NAN reports that the scheme had also inaugurated NHIS-MDGUsers Satisfaction Survey to gauge the opinion of enrollees on areas for improvement.
Source Punch
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