Lawra District Mutual Health Insurance Scheme makes improvement

Lawra, Aug. 25, GNA - The Lawra District Mutual Health Insurance Scheme made a remarkable improvement in its operational performance in 2007, registering 62,375 clients by June 2008 as against 31,000 clients in 2006. This represents 63 percent of the projected population of 100,161 people in the district, Mr. Naa A. N. Kuuyelleh, Board Chairman of the Lawra District Mutual Health Insurance Scheme said. He said with the willingness of the people, it is expected that all people in the district would be registered by 2010. Naa Kuuyelleh made these known at the fourth annual general meeting of the Scheme at Lawra on Saturday. He said the Scheme generated a premium of 89,542.07 Ghana cedis in 2007, recording an increase of 82 percent from the 2006 figure of 49,436.80 Ghana cedis.

The Scheme received a total subsidy of 506,520 Ghana cedis from the National Health Insurance Scheme Authority (NHISA) in 2007 as against 141, 330 Ghana cedis in 2006. Naa Kuuyelleh said total revenue for 2007 stood at 596,130.80 Ghana cedis while total claims paid for the period came to 475,377.33 Ghana cedis He said a total of 75, 998 people attended hospital for the period and of this number, 69,315 were out patients and 6,683 patients were admitted. Average cost of treating a client at the hospital was 6.26 Ghana cedis. The Board Chairman announced that 603 pregnant women had benefited from the government's free maternal health care scheme announced on July 1, this year.

Naa Kuuyelleh commended the government and cabinet for implementing the scheme and for decoupling children below the age of 18 from their parents for free registration under the NHIS. He said the NHISA was discussing with the Attorney General and the Ministry of Health to develop the appropriate guidelines for the registration of infants in September this year. Mr George Sulley, Lawra District Chief Executive, said the NHIS was introduced to provide quality health care services to the people to reduce poverty and maternal and child mortality, as well as attain the millennium development goals. He described the operations of the scheme in the district as a great success as it had helped improved the lives of the people. He urged managers of the scheme to let transparency and accountability to be their watchword and involved the community members in the operations of the scheme to ensure its successful implementation in the district. An 11-member board for the Lawra District Mutual Health Scheme was inaugurated.