Take personal responsibility for your health – NHIA Director

Confidence Owusu-Kontor, Acting Director for National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) Oti Region has charged Ghanaians to prioritize their health needs and take measures to plan for unseen circumstances.

He said as the NHIA rolls-out effort to promote equitable health care irrespective of an individual's socio-economic features, “it is important we make a conscious determination to live and undertake healthy practices.”

Mr Owusu-Kontor stated in an interview with Ghana News Agency in Tema and stressed that a healthy lifestyle is irreplaceable, “let us all together work to ensure that we work and walk in a healthy environment.

“We must reduce the human-induced sicknesses, we must protect the environment, undertake regular exercise, eat a balanced diet, and avoid dangerous lifestyles.”

The NHIA Oti Regional Director reiterated that as part of the general measures to make health care accessible, the authority has launched the "MyNHIS App" which was a deliberate initiative designed to help citizens within the country to prioritize their health needs, making it convenient, and comfortable to access health needs.

"Aside the fact that the app is user-friendly and comfortable for members to rule on, it is also a cost containing measure which reduces the overhead cost of the operations for NHIA,” he said.

Mr Owusu-Kontor explained that the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) membership cards are dollar dominated and imported at high costs.

He said the app has redeemed the cost and breeched the funding gap for cost elements like printing data on cards, stickers, and other machinery used for developing membership cards.

"The app has cut the cost of transportation and time where people move to stations to register or renew their NHIS. It has also allowed the access to benefit packages like maternity care, generic medicines, diagnostic testing, and emergency care," he said.

Adding that the app gives clarity to services offered by NHIS for accessing any credential health facility.

"It is important for everyone to know the benefit packages and services one is entitled to prevent being cheated by health care service providers," he said.

He emphasized that NHIS covers 97 percent of all disease conditions in Ghana except specific branded medicines demanded by a patient which comes with extra cost.

Mr Owusu-Kontor encouraged the media to continually educate the public on the usage and benefit packages with the "MyNHIS App" to discourage people from trooping to the NHIA office for basic services they can easily undertake in the comfort of their homes.