NHIS: Universal coverage is our goal – Sambo

By DOTUN IBIWOYE

THE Acting Executive Secretary of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), Dr. Abdulrahaman Sambo has said 98 percent of health workers in the Federal government employ has keyed into the Scheme.

Sambo,who disclosed this in Lagos at a national workshop for CSOs/NGOs on Community Based Health Insurance Scheme,  CBHI, organised by the NHIS in collaboration with the Civil Society Advocacy Center, CISLAC, however,  argued that the only way universal coverage could be achieved is through coverage of the informal sector as desired by the NHIS through the CBHI.

File photo: A community health practitioners at work

“To achieve this mandate, the NHIS has designed a number of programmes that target the various socio-economic groups in the country. In addition, a blueprint and operational guideline have been developed to guide stakeholders in the implementation of these programmes”, he said.

Executive Director, CISLAC, Auwal Musa Rafsanjani, further called on the Civil Society Organisations and Non-Governmental Organisations  in the country to collaborate with the NHIS to ensure full implementation of the 15 percent budgetary implementation to health development and financing pledged by African Heads of States and Governments in Abuja in 2000.

“The continued loss of millions of African lives annually which can be prevented is unacceptable and unsustainable. Our leaders know what they have to do. They have already pledged to do it. All they have to do now is actually do it. This is all we ask of them,” Rafsanjani stated.