Bolgatanga, Sept 15, GNA - The Bolgatanga Municipal Health Insurance Scheme (BMHIS) has registered 116,762 subscribers since it started operations in November 2005. It registered 14,601 as of August 2008 for the formal sector mainly civil and public servants and 27,074 for the informal sector. The scheme registered 51,568 being children below 18 years, 9,500 for the aged which captures women and men above 70 years, pensioners 3,521 and 10,496 for indigents which comprises people who cannot afford the cost of subscription.

This means that the scheme is invariably offering its services on gratis to subscribers as about 75,085 are the exempted group constitute majority of the scheme's subscribers. The Public Relations Officer for the scheme, Ms. Linda Boakye, who spoke to the Ghana News Agency in Bolgatanga expressed worry at the continuous increase in the number of exemptions and said if care was not taken to institute viable mechanisms to check the trend, the consequences could be enormous.

She also expressed worry at frequent and multiple attendances by subscribers of the scheme and said her outfit had plans to use the electronic media in the municipality to educate members of the public on the need to control attendance at health facilities. Ms. Boakye said the workload on staff at the BMHIS was enormous following the suspension of the creation of a scheme in the newly created Talensi-Nabdam District thereby allowing subscribers from that district to continue with the scheme in Bolgatanga. She complained about inadequate staff at post, the absence of conditions of service and inadequate office space as being responsible for the ineffective supervision of the scheme in the area and called on the National Health Insurance Council (NHIC) to consider the problems and help the scheme overcome it. 15 Sept 08