USAID/IHP laments low figure health insurance enrollment in Bauchi

The USAID funded Integrated Health Program (IHP) has lamented the low figure of enrollment of particularly the poorest of the poor in the government-funded health insurance policy thereby making access to quality healthcare very difficult for them.

The lamentation was made by the Executive Director of USAID/IHP in Bauchi state, Dr Alhassan Siaka on Tuesday while declaring opened a 3 days Media Engagement workshop on Health Insurance Program holding at Jamil Hotels, Azare in Bauchi state.

Alhassan Siaka said that, “this workshop is focusing particularly on universal health coverage. You will agree with me that it doesn’t matter how much investment we make in the PHCs whether the human resources, all the commodities are provided, the infrastructure is upgraded, if we do not have citizens who can afford these services then we are going to have problems”.

He added that, “We have realized that in a state like Bauchi where about 5.7 million out of the population of about 8 million is classified as extremely poor, is difficult for this segment of the population to continually pay for health services out of pocket. So, we thought we wanted to bring attention of the media to this aspect of the challenges in assessing Healthcare services”.

Alhassan Siaka further said that, “A lot need to be done to improve healthcare insurance coverage for the people of Bauchi State and there 3 elements to this health insurance which we will talk about during this meeting. But there are formal health insurance which covers persons who work for the organized private sector and public service. There is the informal health insurance which covers the rest of the population without formal employment, people in small businesses and all that”.

“But then, the most critical one is the vulnerable population, persons who do not have enough resources of their own to be able to pay for their health services through insurance, these people are supposed to be catered for by the government, either the Federal or State government or some philanthropic venture and faith based organizations”.

He lamented that, “Bauchi at the moment is not benefitting more from that, out of the population of the poor as I said 5.3million only of about 50000 are benefiting, how can you cover 50000 out of 5.3 million and expect the indices for health to change positively in respect of the program”.

We have already admit based on the parameters of these people, something has to be done drastically to ensure that they are able to access primary healthcare but at this moment, it is not. That is why at this moment, we will give you all the facts as members of the media, the way things are so that you can build advocacy messages on the exigencies and make sure we get the right responses and require responsibility of government of Bauchi State begin to take its responsibility seriously.

According to him, It is going to require government at the center, federal government to double its effort in this regard. Already, the basic Healthcare provision funds has catered for some why we are able to get 50000 but that is because that is the only number that can be catered for”.

He added that, “There are movements around the National Assembly to increase the allocation of this fund, so we require the media to help put more pressure to ensure that the law passes through and then take the necessary steps to ensure that the funding was expanded to significantly increase persons who are benefitting from it”.

Alhassan Siaka further said that, “At the moment, at the formal health insurance sector, there is a problem between the organized labour and the state government and this has not make a lot of progress over the years, there is room for the media to step in to resolve this issue as some of us are members of the organized labor”. ,

“We have to mediate between both sides so that we are able to move forward, otherwise, the consequences is upon all of us and that is why we think that this is a critical moment and this a very important intervention that we all need to play our roles, at the end of the day, we all will understand what the key issues are and will also understand the roles we need to play in order to make progress in ensuring that there is the need for universal health insurance coverage for the people of Bauchi State”, he stressed.

The USAID/IHP Director expressed fear that, “otherwise, we keep having this number that is not good for the ear. Every time they talk about maternal mortality, infant mortality, child mortality, the low coverage of Immunization, low levels uptake of family planning Bauchi is always among the states with worst indices, not the kind of thing we want to live with, we have to change the narratives, we can do that in this room because we all have roles to play to be to correct the problem”.

The workshop was organized for media practitioners in Bauchi state from both the print and electronic media who are members of the Bauchi State Reproductive, Maternal, Newborn Child Health Media (RMNCH) Network powered by USAID/IHP, Bauchi State.