NHIA Targets Universal Health Coverage

The National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) will adopt community visit and engagement to register more clients and also assist old members renew their cards and make them active, says the Upper West Regional Director of the NHIA, Mr Samuel Lekamwe Lobber

He stated that the community engagement meant to increase the number of clients in the region and also promote universal health coverage, formed part of the national week celebration of the NHIA in the region.

"The national agenda is to attain universal health care by rolling every citizen onto the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) by 2030 but the scheme in the region has set out to achieve that target before 2030, so we are mapping out strategies to reach out to potential clients and get them on board", he said.

Mr Lobber stated this yesterday in an address to the media after a march through the principal streets of Wa to create awareness about the various services offered by the scheme as part of activities lined up to commemorate the NHIS Week celebration in the region.

The week celebration is on the theme "NHIS, using the Ghana Card for expanding access to healthcare".

Mr Lobber hinted that in a quest to expand services rendered to children and also reduce disease burden on parents, the authority had included four childhood cancer diseases in its benefit package for clients.

"The four cancers are Leukemia which is a childhood cancer of the blood; Nephroblastoma, childhood cancer of the kidney; Retinoblastoma, childhood cancer of the eye and Neuroblastoma, childhood cancer of the jaw", he outlined.

He used the opportunity to remind the public of the *929# short code used by clients to renew their membership and also access other services without walking directly into their offices.

"As you are well aware, we are also trying to link members' cards to the Ghana card with the same short code to allow for easy access to healthcare services and also make our services more attractive to clients and in a bid to shoot up the numbers," he added.

He said that penalties for renewing expired cards and waiting periods for new registrants had been waived due to the celebration, and called on the public to take advantage of the window to renew their membership with the scheme.

The week-long celebration was officially launched in Accra on Monday by the First Lady, Mrs Rebecca Akuffo Addo.