NHIS to intervene in 70 hospitals nationwide – Yusuf

By Donald Iorchir

No less than 70 teaching and specialist hospitals nationwide are to benefit from the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) intervention in the areas of equipment upgrade and the provision of drugs and other medical consumables this year.
The Scheme’s Executive Secretary, Prof. Usman Yusuf, who disclosed this to newsmen yesterday in Gwagwalada, during an inspection tour of facilities at the University of Abuja Teaching Hospital, said hospitals that properly utilised previous funds from the agency “stand a better chance of accessing this year’s intervention package.”

He, along with the management team of the agency, is on an assessment tour of 70 teaching and specialist hospitals throughout the country to ascertain their peculiar requirements in addition to determining how the previous funds from the agency were being utilised.
He expressed delight with the progress and development at the teaching hospital, and promised that the request of the management for the upgrade of its filing system from manual to electronic “will be looked into expeditiously.”
Yusuf appealed to Nigerians to enroll into the NHIS project, stressing that with “only N15, 000 people can now access reliable healthcare services throughout the year.”

In a separate interview, the Chief Medical Director of the hospital, Dr. Abdullahi Haruna, commended the NHIS team for the needs assessment visit, and appealed that the records system of the hospital should be upgraded to accommodate the growing number of patients.
He disclosed that the hospital “has enrolled 28, 000 beneficiaries in the NHIS project,” and expressed optimism that “more people will join with the ongoing campaign and enlightenment by the agency for increased public patronage of the scheme.”

Also speaking, the chairman of the Joint Health Sector Union (JOHESU), UATH branch, Mr. Oricha A. Stephen, who spoke to newsmen, lamented the hospital’s trauma facility which, he alleged, had been abandoned for more than five years “now.”
He also decried what he termed “government’s plans to lease out the trauma centre to private investors,” warning that “doing so would remove the trauma facility from the reach of members of the public.”

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