Niger state government has on Tuesday disclosed that, the health insurance scheme (Niger State Contributory Health Scheme) will be mandatory for everyone following the low registration.
This was as only a little above fifty thousand persons including the vulnerable groups have registered.
Addressing Journalists, the state Commissioner for Health and Hospital Services, Dr. Muhammad Makunsidi stated that if the enrollment figure does not improve, the state government would be forced to make it mandatory for parents to before their children/ wards could be enrolled into schools.
He stated that the scheme was assented and gazetted into law since 2019 to cover 52 disease entities, but the registration have been low as only 50,145 have been registered as enrollees.
According to him “the state Governor, Abubakar Sani Bello is not happy with the current number of enrollment of 50,145 persons out of millions of persons in the state. That’s why very soon before anything is done through the government system such as traveling or for a child to be enrolled in school, the parent must show the evidence of registration for the child into the health scheme.
“And, by this, we expect everybody in the state to enroll, the scheme will soon be mandatory by law because it is designed to provide coverage for all Niger state residents regardless of their socio-economic status including workers from the formal and informal sectors and vulnerable groups.
“The aim of the Scheme is to provide access to quality health care services for Niger State residents and reduce or eliminate out-of-pocket (OOP) expenditures on health care. It is based on the principle of pooling of resources and risk sharing.
He announced two packages of registration of the health scheme to include premium of 7,200 per annum and N600 per month, adding that a total of 311 health establishments which include 288 public and 28 private have been accredited respectively across the State to offer services to the people.
Accordingly, he said, ” the scheme has a triple effect that include helping government to reduce boarding on capital project, individuals would not need to run looking for money to pay for their medical bills and the health facilities will no longer need to go to government for funding. The funds accrued to the Scheme will be judiciously utilized in a transparent manner and the state government has so far expended the sum of N130 million into the scheme.”.
