NHIS committee recommends maternal, child health package

A National committee set up by the government to review the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) has recommended a guaranteed maternal and child health package at all levels of the health system in a move to expand health care in Ghana.

The NHIS, since its inception 12 years ago, has not undergone any review, hence the recommendations will provide the authority the opportunity to devise more innovative means of reaching out to the public.

At a National Health Insurance review stakeholder consultative meeting in Accra yesterday, the committee also recommended the review to include ensuring a universally guaranteed primary care package for all Ghanaians and maternal  child health packages in the healthcare system.

It has also called for the empowerment of NHIS beneficiaries and members through  an actively informed and involved membership and improved governance with more accountable and efficiently run NHIS.

Stakeholder engagement 

Setting the stage for the forum, the Chairman of the Review Committee, Dr Chris Atim, gave a highlight of the review report, saying it would help retool the scheme to enable it to recapture its founding ambition of being a pro-poor, universally accessible, quality driven and  sustainable social health insurance scheme for future generations.

The two-day meeting   brought together government officials, development partners, NHIS service providers and a section of the public.

It has the theme: “Towards a More Equitable and Accountable NHIS.”

“If the proposal for universally guaranteed primary health care package service is accepted, it will mean that possessing an NHIS card will no longer be necessary to access primary health care though alternate identification measures would be needed,” Dr Atim said.

Against that backdrop, he posited that membership of the NHIS would only become necessary if a beneficiary was seeking services outside the primary health care basket.

Government committed

Opening the meeting,  the Vice-President, Mr Kwesi Amissah-Arthur, stated that although the government was committed to expanding coverage and sustaining the scheme, it was financially constrained due to the already overstretched government finances.

In spite of the financial constraints, he said the government would not abandon the pursuit of seeking quality health care for the people for  sustainable national development.

Mr Amissah Arthur underscored the fact that the sustainability and improvement of the NHIS required the active involvement of the private sector in the provision of health infrastructure.

For him, the scheme is an integral part of the social protection strategy of the government for which reason he reaffirmed the government’s commitment to ensure that beneficiaries have the best of health care without any financial burden.

Ministers  

Contributing, the Minister of Health, Mr Alex Sebgefia, said the government was proud of the scheme and would, therefore, work relentlessly to sustain it.

He explained that the technical review was essentially to expand access, and make it more sustainable with the primary aim of boosting health care, adding that the review had been long overdue.

He called on stakeholders to ensure that the scheme was sustained.

For his part, the Minister of Finance, Mr Seth Terkper, said health care had a direct correlation with sustainable national development culminating in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.