Korean Health Leaders visit NHIA

A 10-member Korean team was in Ghana last week to collaborate with the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) on areas of common interest and share country knowledge and experiences on health insurance. The team, according to Jin Seon Yang, Deputy Director of the Korean Ministry of Health and Welfare, was drawn from the Health Insurance Review Agency (HIRA), the Korea Foundation for International Healthcare (KOFIH) and that country’s Health and Welfare Ministry. Ms Yang said the visit formed part of a number of exchange programs Korea and Ghana have committed to undertake to share experiences with the view to enhancing the health insurance systems the two countries ran.

Like Ghana, Korea runs a social health insurance program and according to Ms Yang the collaboration is to afford the two countries the opportunity to compare notes on approaches to improve service delivery, institutional structure and country peculiarities in respect of health insurance. The two countries are also to share lessons on best practices and partner on common areas of research. During their one week stay in Ghana, the two sides exchanged ideas on various facets of health insurance and visited some rural healthcare facilities and district offices of the Authority.

The Koreans first visited Ghana to explore the possibility of this joint learning venture in January. A team from Ghana subsequently returned the gesture with a visit to begin the partnership. As part of the exchange program, two officials of the NHIA are collaborating with a number of researchers in Korea on identified areas of common interest.

Chief Executive of the NHIA, Mr Sylvester A. Mensah used the occasion to inform the visiting Korean team of the 10th anniversary commemoration of Ghana’s NHIS. He indicated that the NHIA is pleased with the collaboration and therefore attaches a lot of importance to it