New NHIA regional office inaugurated at Bolgatanga by Prez. Mahama

Story & Pix: Benjamin Xornam Glover, Bolgatanga PRESIDENT JOHN DRAMANI MAHAMA has inaugurated a two storey office Regional Office block for the National Health Insurance Authority at Bolgatanga in the Upper East Region. The project, one of ten being constructed across the country, which was being undertaken by the NHIA, is part of governments towards the provision of infrastructure towards the delivery of an efficient and effective health insurance system in the country. Work on the GH c 500, 000 office block commenced in June 2011 and completed in October this year. It will have offices for the various aspects of the NHIA operations in the region. Speaking at the ceremony, President Mahama expressed the hope that the edifice will not only create an enabling atmosphere for the smooth administration of national health insurance scheme but also contribute to a better, effectively and efficiently management of the scheme in order to deliver a scheme that will increase access to health care, in term of quality and in terms of delivery. He reiterated the fact that the scheme has been growing from strength to strength with subscriptions more than doubled adding that more people are accessing quality health care under the NHIS compared to four years ago. President Mahama said Ghana’s health insurance scheme has become a model for Africa with many other African countries sending people to study how Ghana has managed and achieved this level of success. “These successes have reflected in country’s human development Indicators. For instance, Maternal Mortality has come down from 450 to 280. Though significant, we have not achieve the MDG goal on Maternal Mortality” he said He commended the staff of the NHIA and urged them to continue to work hard with the assurance that government will do its part by supporting the scheme and make it one of the best in the world.

The Chief Executive Officer of the National Health Insurance Authority, Mr. Sylvester Mensah said contrary to speculations, NHIS utilisation has witnessed an increase. He said for instance In 2007, utilisation was around 5 million while in 2008, utilisation jumped up to 12.5million. He said between 2008 and 2011, utilisation was 25.4 million. “This represents growing public confidence in the scheme and an indication that more and more people are enrolling onto the scheme and more and more people are accessing health care through the use of the NHIS card”, he said. Mr. Mensah said that notwithstanding, the authority appreciates the fact that there are a lot more people who may be having challenges in securing their ID cards and accessing health care. To address this difficulty, he said the authority will soon be issuing instant biometric identity cards to its subscribers eliminate the delays in the issuance of ID cards to persons who want to register with the scheme and also put an end to cases where some subscribers never receive their cards after registration. Again, he said the authority have set up a call centre where subscribers and service providers alike could lodge complain either at the point of service delivery or when there are challenges with the authority in order to have a rapid response to the problem. “We are blazing the trail with this shame, like any other country running a social health insurance scheme, we have some challenges but what is important is that what strategies are in place to address those challenges, and that is what we have done”. “We reckon that we have isolated cases of difficulties in hospitals clients are asked to pay for services but the scheme will continue to educate the public in order to overcome such challenges” he added. -End- benjamin.glover@graphic.com.gh