By Ayodele Abere
The people of Ekiti State have been advised to pay more attention to their health by taking one form of insurance or the other.
The advice was given by Dr. Oyejide Oloyede of the National Health Insurance Authority, Ekiti State, who was one of the resource persons at the Town hall meeting for uptake of Health Insurance, held in Ado-Ekiti, the Ekiti State capital, tagged, “Improving the Relationship of the Right to Health in Nigeria”.
The meeting which was organised by Centre for Social Justice focused on getting people enrolled into health insurance programme towards achieving a universal health coverage following the mandate of achieving universal health coverage by the year 2030.
According to Dr. Oloyede, “the main goal is to have more uptake of health insurance towards achieving universal health coverage.
“The meeting is to create more awareness about health insurance to know how far people have gone in health insurance programme and also to know how the grassroots feel about health insurance.
“I believe the non-governmental organization that organised the meeting would present the outcome to the relevant policy makers towards factoring it in, in the plan towards universal health coverage”. Adding that keying into the programme have immense benefits. Said the Doctor.
The representative of Health Maintenance Organisation, Mrs Ibiyemi Omotayo Oso, used the occasion to call on government at all levels to encourage people’s participation in the scheme such that it will be more beneficial for the society at large as health, they say is wealth. “Without good health, there’s no way we will be active in our various organizations”. Oso stated.
She highlighted some of what they do as Private Health Insurance to include; Retirees Health Insurance, Social Health Insurance for Tertiary Institutions and Secondary Schools saying the subscribers will pay a specific amount of money, so that by the time they don’t really have enough money in their pockets, they use that to access care in the hospital.
“That’s the main thing and we send the subscribers to good hospitals. We have good provider that we have agreement with as well as good investigation centres (laboratories).We do a lot of healthcare awareness and sensitisation.
“We also do a wellness check for employees when they newly join an organisation. We equally give authorization code when they want to access secondary care in the hospital within Ekiti State and even outside Ekiti because we cover all the 36 States of the federation”.
At the meeting, it was said that Ekiti State Health Contributory Management Agency, has programmes for various categories of people at a very affordable rate and advised that the office can be visited for further information.
The meeting which attracted people from all walks of life had in attendance the key stakeholders in the health insurance, members of the Nigerian Institute of Public Relations, the Media, Staff of some Ministries and agencies in the State, religious leaders, market women, representatives of the organized labour and artisans among others.
