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Nigeria: Saraki Recommends Hchp Model for Sustainable Community Health Plan
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Vanguard (Lagos)
13 May 2008
Posted to the web 13 May 2008
Sola Ogundipe
THE Federal and State governments have been called upon to be more focused in the area of providing an enabling environment including physical structures and equipment while being more committed in directing more investment into people-oriented initiatives that would enable the national healthcare delivery system become more efficient.
Government all levels have also been compelled to collaborate towards the aim of harnessing vertical interaction and support fom the Federal government and international development partners towards ensuring the workability of community health insurance in in the nation.
Saraki
Making these and other pronouncements in Abuja last week during the opening of the first ever International Conference on Community Health Insurance in Africa, Kwara State Governor, Dr. Bukola Saraki lamented that 80 per cent of the population was not covered by the conventional health insurance scheme because it is designed to fit only those in the formal sector.
His words: "With about 70 per cent of our people residing in the rural areas and a higher percentage engaged largely in the informal sector, we needed something that targets the rural poor especially." Commending the Hygeia Community Health Plan (HCHP) holding sway in the farming community of Shonga Town, in Kwara State, he observed that, since it was launched in 2007, the scheme had brought dramatic change to the fortunes of the formerly existing health facility which went from a center that was seeing little or no patient activity to one having to cope with several hundreds daily.
"Within one year of operating the scheme, more than 32,000 individuals have enrolled and the providing health centers have received 44,644 visits. For Shonga particularly, hospital; visits rose and average of 1,500 monthly."
Faulting the current practice whereby the bulk of funding meant for the health sector was directed at the secondary and tertiary care at the expense of primary health care, the Governor remarked: "How do we deal with the problem of access to health care by the majority of people in the remote parts of the State? Why have we continued to invest the bulk of our resources in tertiary and secondary healthcare wheareas we record the most critical percentage of mortality and morbidity at the primary healthcare level?
According to the Governor, "What happened in Shonga, the dramatic turn-around in the fortune of the hitherto moribund health center, the overwhelming subscription and patronage by the local community and the growing demand by the people is not so much a miracle to me, but an eye-opener; and an important lesson in public policy governance.
Also speaking, the Dutch Ambassador to Nigeria, Arie Van Der Wiel commended the scheme and its achievements so far. "May I say you were very courageous to develop a system which after all is not so common in Africa. With this approach, Nigeria has become a frontrunner, a champion, in innovating health care delivery in Africa."
Wiel noted that 25 million euros were made available under the Dutch Health Insurance Fund for the five-year pilot phase on a grant basis for the projects in Lagos and Kwara States. The HCHP is a creative solution designed to enable the rural poor access qualitative, affordable health care services in Nigeria.
It was launched in 2007 by Hygeia Nigeria Limited-Nigeria's leading health management organisation, in partnership with PharmAccess International, a Dutch NGO committed to making health accessible and affordable to poor populations and with donor support of the Dutch Health Insurance Fund.
Essentially, the HCHP is a subsidized health insurance package targeted at the poor. For a monthly premium of just N200, the average individual in Shonga, is accessing unlimited health care services.
The Abuja event was a gathering of intellectually stimulating debate about the innovative approaches in the healthcare delivery system, through a pioneering community health insurance scheme.
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Amongst objectives of the conference was the move to showcase the successes of the pilot scheme of the HCHP in Shonga, Kwara State. The event also aimed to recommend the HCHP platform as template to be adopted by other states and communities towards achieving health components of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Stakeholders from a wide spectrum of health concerns locally and internationally were represented at the 2-day event.
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