C/R minister gives ultimatum on issuance of health insurance cards

Cape Coast, Oct. 26, GNA - The Central Regional Minister, Nana Ato Arthur, on Friday tasked officials of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) in the Region to evolve measures to ensure that the back-log of ID cards for the NHIS yet to be issued is cleared by the end of the year, to enhance the smooth operation of the Scheme. As at June this year, out of the 731,742 people registered throughout the Region, 306,676 have been issued with cards, with the remaining 424,066 yet to receive theirs. Nana Arthur made the call at a regional NHIS stakeholders forum, at Cape Coast, to among other things assess the Region's performance, share ideas about best practices and map out strategies to address key implementation challenges.

The challenges deliberated on at the forum, which was attended by district chief executives, managers of the scheme and officials of the Ghana Health Service, included relations between the Chief Executive and the scheme managers, back-log of ID cards to be issued, non adherence to contracts by service providers and the lack of office space for the scheme operators.

Nana Arthur, however, commended the managers of the scheme for their performance in increasing coverage from December last year and said as at June this year, an amount of 9.4 billion cedis had been collected as premiums as against 3.5 billion cedis as at December last year.

The number of clients had also increased from 558,726 last year, to 731,726, as at June this year, out of the Region's population of 1.7 million.

Nana Arthur, particularly praised the Gomoa scheme operators for their ability to register 112,260 of the area's population of 210,000. He noted that although considerable improvement had been made there was the need for concerted effort to ensure its thorough and successful implementation. He urged the scheme managers to involve their metropolitan, municipal and district chief executives in the operation of the scheme in their areas, since it was a "major government policy", so that they could be given the needed support to enhance its objectives. He cautioned them against the misuse of the vehicles allocated to them by ensuring that they were used strictly for official duties and warned that the Regional Coordinating Council (RCC) would not tolerate the misuse of the vehicles. He reiterated government's commitment to the success of the Scheme and commended the NHIC, for supporting the schemes in the region with 24.1 billion cedis from 16.1 billion cedis in December last year. The Minister also commended organisations like DANIDA and World Vision and two members of Parliament from the Region, Mr P C Appiah-Ofori and Kennedy Agyapong, for their support for the Scheme. 26 Oct. 07