From Idu Jude, Abuja
Chief Medical Director, Garki Hospital, Abuja, Dr Adamu Onu, has stressed the need for media enlightenment to propagate the importance of citizens at all level to key into the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), adding that this is the only way out of their health inadequacies. He spoke with Daily Sun in Abuja:
“The system is the only possible way the indigent people can access medical care while the economic brouhaha lasts. Day in day out, cases of indigent people who cannot afford medical care keep increasing, with the programme designed to be in collaboration with the FCT social development secretariat, most of the cases are handled without much problems.
Healthcare for the indigent
“Part of our responsibilities is to provide health care to the indigent people who have no access to health care at any level. We just finished with one of such cases now and it could only be through health insurance scheme that one can archive this. For example, we treat all emergencies without demanding for anything for those who are covered by the policy.
“We just finished with one shortly before you came in, and one of those cases from the FCT social welfare. I can tell you that the national health insurance scheme is the place Nigerians need to be and it is also good that the act establishing the NHIS has been amended. And now we know that health care is mandatory for all Nigerians.
“For example, where anyone is working the management is supposed to provide health insurance coverage so that people go straight to the hospital where he is registered to be treated without tears/stress. So that is how it ought to be. So the NHIS that I know is already developing the operational guidelines and in FCT here emergency cases are brought under the system called National Emergency Management System (NEMS) and that is to say that even emergency cases can be handled in this insurance scheme.
“When building collapse happened in Lagos, many of the victims were flown to Garki Hospital here and they received treatment and discharged. That is a confirmation that the emergency management system is already in place and functioning. And it is not as if nothing is happening but it is just that it is a process which would take time for the system to be known and strengthened and that is why we are advocating for media and public enlightenment to educate the people.
“Contrary to the fact that Health Management Organization (HMO), are supposed to have health facilities that would qualify it to be part of the process, HMOs are not necessarily hospital owners as such idea was never part of the policy. Such is not to my knowledge; HMOs are not necessarily hospital owners. That is not what an HMO does. At least, not the model that I know of, HMO is HMO and hospital is hospital but if a HMO happens to own a hospital that is a different mater entirely.
Cost of medical bills
“Problems of running the cost of patients who could not afford medical bills contributed mostly in the Federal Government quest to institutionalise it and it has become a universal thing Such cases arises on daily bases. It is not only here, be it at national hospital, or other private hospital facilities, such are on the increase.
“There is no hospital in Nigeria, which does not have people coming in without money to be treated. That was the reason I said that the solution to that is not to create a knee jerk that this hospital has done this or that. The solution to this menace is to create a system like the health insurance scheme through which everyone could access health care. For Nigerians to access medical care, the process is already there and it is just that it needs some media hype to drive the idea to every doorstep.
“May be the media can educate Nigerians about health insurance scheme and how it works. I think that we should be looking at what we should do to help Nigerians in terms of access to health care. That is why I said that even as small as primary healthcare and as cheap as they are, you can still find people who come without money to be treated.
“We keep advising that the scheme is the only way out because health care in Nigeria, is still on the concurrent list, meaning that it is not only government that can provide health care for everyone. So the question is, how do we as a nation make health care accessible to people so that is why I said that the only way out is health insurance programme and one other thing is that people look at this hospital and think that majority of people coming in here pay from their individual pockets, but it is not true because most of the people are on NHIS.
Non-informal sector
“There is much happening that ignorant Nigerians need to be exposed of. I think this is where the press need to do a job because when you educate yourself, you can begin to hold government accountable on the need that we need to have as a people and also sometimes we forget that we have 36 states and the FCT only to get hold of the federal government alone.
“There is no place in the developed and underdeveloped countries where federal government alone handles health provision. Nobody does that if you want your society to be developed because there is what we call catastrophic health expenditure. It is a situation where someone is healthy today and tomorrow one health challenge sets in suddenly and he or she have to sell houses or cars to remain alive and that is what lack of health can do, so in those places you find out that they have put in systems and if every body made little contribution to the health scheme, then it becomes a pool of fund so that whose ever needs it can access it.
“That is what is known as pooled risk and that the principle of health insurance and all of us would not fall sick at the same time so those who may fall sick can have access to it, provided they are covered already in the scheme because if you have not contributed it wouldn’t make sense for you to come and benefit from where you have not worked.
“Ignorance contributed part of the failure of people keying into the system being it from the formal or informal sectors.”
