USAID/IHP decries poor health insurance enrollment among vulnerable residents in Bauchi

SELYA YARNAP,  Bauchi

The United States of America International  Development (USAID) funded Integrated Health Program (IHP) has decried low access to basic healthcare services among the vulnerable population in Bauchi State

The Executive Director of USAID/IHP, Dr. Alhassan Siaka said this  during the ongoing two-day workshop organized for media practitioners in Azare, Bauchi State,  on Health Insurance Program, said over 60 percent of the State’s population does not have access to quality healthcare due poor awareness and outrageous financial implications.

Dr. Alhassan Siaka said that, “the workshop is focusing particularly on universal health coverage. You will agree with me that it  doesn’t matter how much investment we make in the PHCs whether the human resources, all the commodities are provided, the infrastructure is upgraded, if we do not have citizens who can afford these services then we are going to have problems”.

“We have realized that in a state like Bauchi where about 5.7 million out of the population of about 8 million is classified as extremely poor, is difficult for this segment of the population to continually pay for health services out of pocket. So, we thought we wanted to bring attention of the media to this aspect of the challenges in assessing Healthcare services”.

Dr. Siaka  said  a lot is  need to be done to improve healthcare insurance coverage for the people of Bauchi State. Adding  that, “there 3 elements to this health insurance which we will talk about during this meeting. But there are formal health insurance which covers persons who work for the organized private sector and public service. There is the informal health insurance which covers the rest of the population without formal employment, people in small businesses and all that”.

According to the  him, “but then, the most critical one is the vulnerable population, persons who do not have enough resources of their own to be able to pay for their health services through insurance, these people are supposed to be catered for by the government, either the Federal or State government or some philanthropic venture and faith based organizations”.

“Bauchi at  the moment is not benefitting more from that, out of the population of the poor as I said 5.3million only of about 50000 are benefiting, how can you cover 50000 out of 5.3 million and expect the indices for health to change positively in respect of the program”.

“We have already admit based on the parameters of these people, something has to be done drastically to ensure that they are able to access primary healthcare but at this moment, it is not. That is why at this moment, we will give you all the facts as members of the media, the way things are so that you can build advocacy messages on the exigencies and make sure we get the right responses and require responsibility of government of Bauchi State begin to take its responsibility seriously”.

He said that It  is going to require government at the center, federal government to double its effort in this regard. Already, the basic Healthcare provision funds has catered for some why we are able to get 50000 but that is because that is the only number that can be catered for.

“There are movements around the National Assembly to increase the allocation of this fund, so we require the media to help put more pressure to ensure that the law passes through and then take the necessary steps to ensure that the funding was expanded to significantly increase persons who are benefitting from it”, Dr Siaka said

At the moment, he said that at the formal health insurance sector, there is a problem between the organized labour and the state government and this has not make a lot of progress over the years, there is room for the media to step in to resolve this issue as some of us are members of the organized labor.

The USAID/IHP Director added, “we have to mediate between both sides so that we are able to move forward, otherwise, the consequences is upon all of us and that is why we think that this is a critical moment and this a very important intervention that we all need to play our roles, at the end of the day, we all will understand what the key issues are and will also understand the roles we need to play in order to make progress in ensuring that there is the need for universal health insurance coverage for the people of Bauchi State”.

“Otherwise, we keep having this number that is not good for the ear. Every time they talk about maternal mortality, infant mortality, child mortality, the low coverage of Immunization, low levels uptake of family planning Bauchi is always among the states with worst indices, not the kind of thing we want to live with”.

Dr Siaka  then called on Media to change the narratives  saying  that the media   has  roles to play to be to correct the problem in the state.