5,000 new members join Sekondi NHIS

The Sekondi District branch of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) has registered close to 5,000 new members.

This has been carried out under the new Biometric Membership System (BMS) introduced by the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA).

According to authorities of the scheme, since the registration began on October 16, turn out had been overwhelming.

Out of the number recorded, 3,790 have had their cards renewed; 797 new members had been registered, with 317 of the figure being pregnant women.

"They have all been issued with their biometric cards," management of the scheme said.

According to the NHIA, the new biometric system was introduced in response to challenges with duplications of enrolment.

Consequently, the biometric system had been introduced by the authorities primarily to ensure data integrity of all members put on the scheme and also discourage multiple claims submissions.

Speaking in an interview, Sekondi District Scheme Manager, Seth Kwesi Nyarku explained that a shift system had even been put in place at his outfit.

This, he said, was due to the growing number of people coming to the office for registration.

As a result of the growing numbers, he mentioned that a priority queue had been created to cater for the aged and pregnant women.

Mr Nyarku explained that the priority queue was basically people who had special needs and could be considered vulnerable.

He added that those in the normal queue equally approved of the priority queue established to register these vulnerable groups.

Meanwhile, some of the persons who had come to register complained of extortion.

According to them, they were being asked by the authorities to pay two cedis to be provided with the cover of the NHIS biometric card.

This, Mr Nyarku admitted, was true. He, however, explained that they were taking the two cedis for the cover of the card. According to him, the offer for the cover was not compulsory as speculated, but rather voluntary.