NHIS is leading global model — Sylvester Mensah
A former Chief Executive of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), Mr Sylvester Mensah, has urged the public to ignore negative media reports on the scheme and take advantage of its benefits.
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Mr Mensah, a presidential staffer, maintained that Ghana’s NHIS remained a leading global model and a centre for international knowledge and experience sharing.
“Be assured that Ghana has taken global lead in its efforts to ensure universal financial risk protection against healthcare delivery,” he maintained. Mr Mensah was speaking at the Labone Senior High School 47th Speech and Prize-giving Day in Accra last Saturday. He is an old student of the school.
The Speech and Prize-giving Day was on the theme: “Preparing the youth for the future: the role of ethical values.”
Further investment needed
While acknowledging that the scheme had its own fair share of challenges, Mr Mensah said the NHIA had gained global recognition as a promising model for many developing countries.
“The NHIS is a leading global model whose major challenges are twofold - moral hazard and sustainability,” he stated.
He, therefore, suggested that the scheme needed further investment to improve its long-term prospects and added that the public needed to take advantage of the scheme and enjoy its associated benefits.
He further bemoaned the excessive politicisation of health care and education issues and said that health care and education issues should be depoliticised as much as possible with cooperation across political spectrum.
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He said “populism for political gains should be made in favour of a long-term educational plan with cross-party support”.
Mr Mensah urged the students to take their education seriously to prepare them adequately for the future.
He said there were many opportunities in life; however, it favoured the prepared. He said: “When preparation meets opportunity, the result is success.”
Report
In her report, the Headmistress of the school, Ms Kate Bannerman, commended the the old students for their immense contribution towards the infrastructural development of the school.
She mentioned that the old students, through their various year groups, had provided cements, whiteboards, lockers, laptops, among many other items, to the school.
Other old students, she said, had also undertaken construction and renovation works in the school.
However, she said more needed to be done and appealed to the old students and other stakeholders to support the school to complete their six-unit staff flat which had been idle since 2010.
Extra dormitories for boys and girls to accommodate the increasing number of students accessing boarding facilities, she said, were also needed.
Touching on 2014/2015 WASSCE, she stated that out of the 650 students presented, 564 students had passes to enter the universities and other tertiary institutions.