As part of efforts geared towards ensuring that all Nigerians have unhindered access to affordable and quality health care, the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) has registered 1,000 members of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA).
The NBA presented a cheque of N15 million to the NHIS to cover the initial 1,000 members of the Association, with a promise to capture more lawyers into the health insurance scheme.
During the payment of the health insurance registration yesterday in Abuja, the Executive Secretary of the National Health Insurance Scheme, Prof Mohammed Sambo said: “This is a great day for us in the NHIS because our drive towards attaining universal health coverage (UHC) is gradually coming to be. Lawyers are a group of learned people. They came to us seven months ago where they obtained information on our newly-introduced programme GIFSHIP, which is a platform to enable every Nigerian to join the National Health Insurance Scheme irrespective of where they work.
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“This is a programme for self-employed people, associations, philanthropists, where they can pay a premium for people to come and join the National Health Insurance Scheme.
“The NBA has registered 1,000 people as a pilot, and they have promised to continue until the over 100,000 members of the Nigerian Bar Association are registered with the NHIS.”
The President of the NBA, Olumide Akpata said: “It is essential that Nigerians subscribe because health insurance is so important.
“If the NBA subscribes, it lets the people know that the scheme works. We will lead by example. “We are paying for a one-year subscription for 1,000 of our members as a strategy to encourage our members. We have done a transfer of N15 million for 1,000 of our members.”
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