WAHO advocates improvement in health coverage in West Africa

Members of West African Health Organization (WAHO), called for continual advocacy and sensitization to deepen political commitment and further consensus building among stakeholders on health issues.

The request came at just ended meeting of WAHO in Accra, to develop an action plan for the generalization of Universal Health Coverage (UHC) in member states.

The meeting noted that countries were at different stages of development and implementation of UHC.

The WAHO therefore, said there was the need to encourage member countries to create national network to ensure that UHC was always on the national agenda to sustain progress so far made.

The meeting was to create the platform and opportunities for member countries to understand challenges, similarities and possibility of resolving the problems.

The WAHO said the gathering was also to bring to the fore approaches that have worked in other countries and those that did not work, create an atmosphere for networking and communicating online in sharing experiences, to ensure universal health access for all citizens in the West African sub region.

The UHC, refers to organized health care systems, built around the principle of universal coverage for all members of society, combining mechanisms for health financing and service provision.

A communiqué issued by members at the end of the meeting noted that countries need to develop appropriate policies, institutional arrangement and legislation based on good principles and best practices to guide the implementation of the UHC.

It said to ensure sustainability of UHC, there should be innovative domestic resources mobilization, building capacity within the overall health system, strengthening of their respective countries and setting up good monitoring and evaluation system in support of the implementation of UHC.

The statement said WAHO would disseminate the workshop report at high level, monitor and evaluate the implementation of the deliberations of the workshop and document the baseline of the UHC in the ECOWAS through a standardized format.

Dr Dogo Mohammed, Executive Secretary of the Nigeria Health Insurance scheme and chairperson of WAHO, said home grown resource mobilization was crucial to cushioning countries against donor fatigue.

He advocated innovative ways of resource acquisition and recommended mobile phone texting as a possible way to achieve targets.

Dr Sam Adjei, Chief Executive of the Centre for Health and Social Services, called for appropriate policies and institutional and legislation frame work.

Mr Salifu Zouma, Director, Division of Planning and Technical Assistance of WAHO, said it was the expectation of the group that by 2020, citizens of the ECOWAS would benefit from UHC.

The meeting discussed UHC research conducted by WAHO in Ghana, Benin, Niger, Guinea Bissau and Senegal from August to December 2010.

The study revealed that these countries had initiated various mechanisms to abandon health care user fees, which were driving people into poverty, in favour of national health insurance scheme.

According to the research, Ghana was the only country which seemed to have made significant progress towards providing universal health coverage through a national health insurance scheme for the majority of the citizenry.

"In cases where health insurance plans have been introduced, premiums are proving to be as prohibitory as were user fees and that there have been problems collecting them in some nations and premium-based models, for the most part, have not generated the financial resources needed to sustain health care systems," the research said.

It found out that though countries were slowly moving in the direction of universal health coverage and national health insurance plans, they had no policy framework to back them as Ghana had done and that there was no harmonization of schemes in the other four countries.

It was for that reason the WAHO meeting was expected to come up with an ECOWAS regulation to standardize modus operandi of member countries.