Enroll more residents to achieve Universal Health Coverage -Hon. Stephen Yakubu told NHIA

The outgoing Upper East Regional Minister, Hon. Stephen Yakubu, has urged staff of the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) in the Region to ensure more residents are enrolled onto the scheme to achieve Universal Health Coverage (UHC).

“I will fervently make an appeal to the NHIA and its hard working staff in the region to intensify efforts in ensuring that if not all, but it should be above 90 percent of our populace registered unto the scheme,” he said.

The Minister made the appeal at the Annual Performance Review Meeting of the NHIA on the theme: “Health Heroes: 20 Years Strong” in Bolgatanga.

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Hon. Yakubu noted that the scheme brought enormous benefits to the citizenry, but expressed concern that the issue of illegal payments by the insured at some health facilities eroded the gains of the Authority.

“In fact such a canker if not uprooted now, will soon bring this pro-poor scheme collapsing on us all,” the Minister, who was reassigned to the Upper West Region, cautioned.

Touching on some successes of the scheme, the Minister explained that statistics form the Ghana Health Service indicated improvement in Life Span of Ghanaians, reduction in maternal mortality, improvement in life births, increase in utilization of healthcare services as many citizens sought healthcare services.

“Access to health service delivery has improved tremendously. Also, the Out Patient Department (OPD) of the various hospitals have witnessed a remarkable attendance also number of attendees since the implementation of this pro-poor policy in 2003, with almost 96 percent of OPD cases being card bearing members,” he added.

The Director for Northern Belt of the NHIA, Mr. Titus Sorey who was not enthused about the performance of the year under review, charged the Regional Directorate and the District Directors to deploy workable strategies that would yield better results.

He asked the monitoring team to send verifiable results to the Claim Processing Center (CPC) of drugs covered by the scheme but active members had to pay for action to be taken against such healthcare providers.

The Acting Upper East Regional Director of the NHIA, Mr Kassim Abudulai said the Bawku conflict affected their operations in the Bawku Municipality and its environs.

He said the situation accounted for huge drop from 935,077 active members, representing 70.45 percent in 2022 to 863, 494 representing 63.8 percent in 2023.

SOURCE: Coverghana.com.gh