Mothers, babies and elderly sleep in the open for NHIA cards

Nursing mothers with their babies and the elderly had to abandon their homes and bed to sleep for days at the veranda of the National Health Insurance Scheme office at Koforidua in order to renew their NHIS cards.

A number of elderly people booked to go through the biometric registration for their NHIS cards had to go to the New Juaben Municipal office of the NHIS daily for over a month without getting the opportunity to register.

This is happening despite the pronouncement by the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) that children, the elderly and the sick be given priority in the biometric registration of members of the NHIS.

This came to light when the Ghana News Agency (GNA) interacted with some of the clients of the NHIS, who were in a queue waiting for their turn to register at the Koforidua office of the New Juaben Municipal Health Insurance Scheme.

Madam Fati Abdullah, a nursing mother said, she came from Akim Tafo the previous day for the registration exercise and had to spend the night on the veranda of the NHIS office because she did not get the opportunity to register her child and she could not go back to Tafo and join the queue the next day.

She further explained that, she needed the health card urgently to go for medical review at the Tafo Government Hospital.

Madam Helena Aframea, 73, told the GNA that, she was booked for registration on 21st of July and had been coming to the NHIS office daily but after almost a month, she had not been able to register.

She said, she got to the premises of the NHIA as early as 3:00am and as at about 3:00pm on the day she spoke to GNA, she was still in the queue waiting to be served.

Mr Yaw Amakwaah said, he had slept at the NHIA office for three days without getting the opportunity to go through the registration process.

Mr Amankwaah pleaded with the officials of the NHIA to open more of the registration centers in the New Juaben Municipality to bring down the stress that people were going through.

Speaking to the GNA, Mr Alexander Ameyaw, the Assistant Management Information System (MIS) officer at the NHIS office in the New Juaben Municipality explained that, the registration exercise was slow due to bad network, making the registration of a person to take close to an hour instead of ten minutes.

He said the office had six of the biometric registration machines installed and one mobile machine which is currently at the NHIA regional office.

Mr Ameyaw said people who wanted to register go through a booking process at the Jackson Park where payment of the scheme was done, and a date given for the biometric registration.

He said in all, the office caters for 100 appointees daily from the booking center, in addition to pregnant women, emergencies, children below five and special protocol which includes the security agencies.