Stakeholders in the health sector have lamented that health insurance coverage still remain poor.
They spoke at a Strategic Stakeholders Meeting on Draft National Policy on Incentivising the Health Service Industry and Healthcare Investments, hosted by the Healthcare Federation of Nigeria (HFN) in Lagos.
The meeting, which was tagged “Forging a new paradigm,” discussed the health insurance coverage in the country.
It had the Chairman Senate committee on health, Ibrahim Yahaya Oloriegbe, who also stated the reasons strengthening structures in the health sector are multidimensional. As it has been said, health insurance should be mandatory for all. However, due to the poor coverage with less than four per cent of population, there is room for wider coverage.
During the presentations from various health care providers, challenges were discussed and how solutions for areas such as the biomed engineering sector, nursing, mental health, healthcare business network could be made.
One of the speakers, Dr Jimi Coker, made a presentation on healthcare business network; while the establishment of Nigeria National Health Service and other vital points were tabled.
Oloriegbe, representing Kwara central, explained how Nigeria could strengthen the structure in the sector. “Structure strengthening are multidimensional. One, there are ones that require improvement in the implementation of existing policy like the first issue that was raised was about quality and standard and with national health act has already provided for certificate on standards.
“So, what we don’t have is implementing that so strengthening will be now to advocate and push for the implementation of that particular law. The other one where you say strengthening will be where we have capacity gap to build and strengthen capacity to enable people have better knowledge and skills to implement policy existing policy or do their work very well.”
On the best approach in solving the problems the healthcare providers brought to the table, Oloriegbe said: “Human beings are there to have problems and to solve problems. Essentially, that is why we come together to have government and to live as human beings. In terms of approaches, first when you identify a problem, you identify appropriate strategies to be able to solve them, which is what we have done here. We have had discussions; we come up with various approaches.
“So, when you say the best, it depends on which one of the challenges. One, we agree on some that require new policy and we set up modalities for such policies. We identify some that require new law, which will be to regulate to guide whatever it will be and we identify some that require multi-sectorial collaborations and coming together.”