…  Say NHIA, panacea to Nigeria’s journey to Universal Health Coverage

By  Chioma Obinna & Toheeb Idris

With President Mohammadu Buhari signing into law the National Health Insurance Authority Act moving it from a scheme, experts in Lagos have identified the various success tips required for medical doctors under the auspices of the Nigerians Medical Associations, NMA, to partake and succeed in the programme.  

The experts also maintained that NHIA Act was a solution to Nigeria’s journey to attaining Universal Health Coverage, UHC, as it has the global authority to take responsibility for all issues of Health Insurance in Nigeria.     

In his submission at the just concluded NMA Lagos’s Annual Conference, the National President of the Healthcare Providers Association of Nigeria, HCPAN, Dr Adeyeye Jimmy Arigbabuwo listed success tips to include; trust, transparency, accountability, database-in-truth, fairness, equity, quality, education, advocacy, determination, accessibility, availability, tolerance and accommodating one another.

In his presentation titled: “National Health Insurance Authority Act, The Panacea NHIA: Panacea for Universal Health Coverage in Nigeria” Arigbabuwo stated that health care providers remain the tools by which the final uptakers (enrollees) will get to consume health care delivery and services both in public and private Sectors. 

Encouraging medical doctors in Lagos who choose to operate private health care facilities to get registered and accredited by the NHIA State and zonal offices, he urged them to encourage urban/rural migration instead of rural/ urban migration in citing or location of their health facilities.

“A lot of primary health care services will be needed for the teaming rural community populations.  Capitation and other primary care provisions will naturally receive priority as primary care remains the base and basis of health Insurance majorly, especially in pro-poor health care financing 

“The Public Health Physicians will be needed more than ever before especially now that the old Bamako initiative, followed by Abuja Declaration of about 2001 will be getting attention.”

He said the various groups of providers will have to encourage enabling environment for the enrollees who may not need to keep roaming the streets to have comprehensive access to care services. 

He said to achieve UHC; all stakeholders’ summits should be converged on the implementation of the NHIA Act as well as joint ownership of operational guidelines.

Earlier, the immediate past Lagos NMA Chairman, Dr Tajudeen Salau said the theme of the conference, “Healthcare Workforce and Infrastructural Development, Setting the Agenda for the Next Political Dispensation” was chosen for the fact that the healthcare workforce and its infrastructure was their primary focus and interest.

In his remarks, the Chairman of the occasion, Prof Wole Alakija noted that poor health insurance coverage has denied many Nigerians access to hospitals, promoted self-medication and resulted in unpreventable death and complication of ailments that hospital can treat at low cost.

“We had the slogan during the beginning of the Primary Health Care era as health for all Nigerians by the year 2000.