NHIS records high patronage in Wa Municipality

Wa, Jan. 3, GNA - The Wa Municipal Mutual Health Insurance Scheme is recording a high number of subscribers as most people are now beginning to understand that it is cheaper to join the scheme than to stick to the "cash and carry system." People are forming long queues at the offices of the scheme and registration centers to join the scheme. Out of a total of 57,133 people who have subscribed to the scheme throughout the municipality, 9,610 people from the informal sector of the population joined the scheme in December last year alone.

Mr John Bosco Zury, the Scheme Manager, told the GNA in an interview that if this trend continued the scheme would cover more than 50 per cent of people in the municipality by the middle of this year. He attributed this positive development to stepped up education campaigns being undertaken by senior and junior secondary school leavers who have been recruited by the scheme for that purpose and testimonies given by people who had already benefited from the scheme. Mr Zury mentioned the high cost of malaria treatment by private health facilities that offer services to clients under the scheme, inadequate funds for claims administration and late submission of bills as some of the challenges confronting the scheme.

The Wa Municipal Scheme had so far settled 1.966 billion cedis as medical bills of 31,715 clients, collected premiums amounting to 1.098 billion cedis, while 1.687 billon cedis came from the National Health Insurance secretariat. He called on the government to provide them with logistics such as computers and bicycles to facilitate their work and institute training programmes for the staff of the Claims Unit.