The liberalisation of the telecoms sector over 10 years ago made access to phone easy. Today, Nigerians use their phones for various things, especially business. The revolution is also opening a new vista for poor rural and urban dwellers to access health care services. How far can this go? LUCAS AJANAKU reports.
Forty-three-year-old Blessing Adewumi lives in Egbeda, a Lagos suburb. A petty trader and mother of four, she lost her husband about four years ago.
Since then, life has been difficult for her, because she sponsors the education of her children.
Recently, she took ill. Instead of going to the hospital, she asked Tina, her eldest daughter, 18, to call Mama Kazeem, a popular drug hawker in the neighbourhood.
She said: “I don’t have money to go to the hospital. Iya Kazeem will ‘count’ malaria drugs for me and I will be well. She is our family doctor. By the time I give her N200, she will ‘select’ drugs for me and in no time, I will be back on my feet. Going to the hospital is expensive. I have to pay house rent, school fees and feed my four children without any support. Aside God, there is no supporter, so I always pray to God not to allow my children to fall sick.”
Another housewife, who simply identified herself as Mama Glory, also has a sad tale to tell. She was not feeling fine, so she visited one of the private hospitals where tests were run on her. When the result came out, it showed that she had typhoid fever. She was billed N10,000 and was told she would be on admisison for three days.
She never went back. Reason: She does not have enough money. “If I have N10,000, I will start a ‘pure’ water business immediately. Instead, I will go to the market and get Iya alagbo (herbs seller) to arrange agbo for me. It will flush it out of my body system,” she said.
Mrs Adewumi and Mama Glory are few of the many poor Nigerians not covered by the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) because they are not engaged in the formal sectors of the economy.
Their stories are common, especially among rural dwellers. They cannot pay for their treatment. Many of them toil all day long, trying to eke out a living.
Minister of Communications Technology Dr Omobola Johnson lamented that the ability of many sub-Saharan African countries to improve their rating and ranking on the Human Development Index (HDI), especially those that relate to health, is constrained by several socio-economic and infrastructural factors.
She said: “For example, Nigeria’s per capita spending on health is $161, comparing unfavorably with the $ 948 calculated by the World Health Organisation (WHO) as the recommended total global spending on health per person per year. Inherent in this low per capita spend on health is an acute shortage of healthcare workers.
“Africa faces a severe shortage of trained medical personnel–we have approximately three per cent of the world’s health workers despite having 11 per cent of the world’s population, a statistic that is indeed worsened by the fact that many healthcare professionals opt to work abroad after their training because of better remuneration, better facilities and better opportunities for career growth and aspirations.”
It is in view of this grim picture that the partnership among NHIS and information communication technology (ICT) firm, MTN and Salt & Einstein MTS, to launch a health insurance programme, which will afford its customers who cannot access quality health care, the opportunity to do so through MTN Y’ello Health Cover is instructive.
Airtel Nigeria also launched an initiative in this direction to deepen health insurance scheme and bring health at affordable costs to its subscribers.
The MTN Y’ello Health Cover is an all-inclusive mobile health insurance programme, which will afford Nigerians the opportunity to access good, affordable and quality healthcare service wherever, whenever the need arises.
Through the programme, the NHIS is working with all the leading Health Management Organisations (HMOs) to enabled mobile subscribers to opt into a micro healthcare insurance cover where, they can access a range of pre-defined medical treatments for which affordable premium can also be remitted through the subscribers’ mobile phone.
According to the telco, this will enable subscribers under this programme have access to unlimited number of visits to the hospital with as low as a daily or weekly airtime deduction of N35 and N250 to access effective health care as many times as treatment is needed annually. It also gives access to a combination of over 7000 hospitals and primary healthcare providers nationwide currently registered under the NHIS scheme from which subscribers can choose.
The main objective of the programme is to ensure the removal of financial barriers, which means, poor people can have unfettered access to good and effective healthcare without the usual “out-of-pocket expenses”. It is not always that one has substantial amount of money in the pocket, particularly when one is facing health challenges.
Health insurance is a type of coverage that ensures the cost of an insured individual’s medical and surgical expenses are paid by the scheme on the behalf of the insured. It is being provided through this programme to save the masses from self medication, or from shying away from receiving treatment because of cost or other competing needs or considerations.
Executive Secretary/Chief Executive Officer, NHIS, Dr. Femi Thomas, said MTN will leverage on its huge subscribers to take healthcare to the nooks and crannies of the country. He said: “MTN is a big player in the Nigerian economy, having a good number of registered Nigerians on its database. To be able to reach out to Nigerians, we at NHIS decided to partner with Salt & Einstein MTS and MTN Nigeria on this new initiative to achieve “Universal Health Coverage” for Nigerians nationwide.
“The time has come for us to extend health insurance to Nigerians from all walks of life. With Nigeria’s population in mind, NHIS in partnership with MTN Nigeria and Salt & Einstein MTS is bent on providing more efficient health care services to those who indeed cannot afford them. This will help pool risk and share healthcare costs equitably across the population.”
Chief Executive Officer, MTN Nigeria, Michael Ikpoki, said the focus market for the Y’ello health insurance cover are Nigerians who have no health insurance cover principally because they cannot afford the regular health insurance services in the market.
“These individuals like everyone else, need medical care. However, without access to insurance, they probably would be having occasional challenges paying for medical treatment, because such expenses would usually be without or at short notice. It is to take away this burden of impromptu medical expenses that we are partnering to introduce this product,” he said.
He added that the importance of education and sensitisation of the populace about healthcare and commended the NHIS for its drive to provide universal healthcare to Nigerians.
The Executive Chairman, Salt & Einstein MTS, Dr. Ernest Ndukwe, said bringing his vast experience in mobile technology and telecommunication industry in Nigeria to the table, identified the need to leverage the market penetration and unmatched reach of mobile telecoms in Nigeria. The former Executive Vice Chairman of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) said statistics reveal that mobile telecoms subscription in Nigeria is over 129 million. This creates adequate grounds for direct health insurance provision to Nigerians who, without this, would have no access to the NHIS.
Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer, Salt & Einstein MTS, the 0obile insurance services aggregator, said findings have shown that Nigeria still has less than four per cent of its population covered by basic health care services at this time in our nation’s history. “There is no disputing the fact that, one of the best things to do at this time is to come together, working with NHIS and of course, starting off with Nigeria’s leading telecommunications operator, MTN, to bring this health insurance cover to Nigerians who, hitherto, have been excluded from access to good health care service. MTN has demonstrated that they are interested in the social good and welfare of Nigerians. We hope to create more products that benefit Nigerians across the country,” he said.
The MTN Y’ello insurance cover is one of the many ways Africa’s leading telecommunications network is adding value to the lives of it subscribers. The next leg of the launch will take place in Abuja at a yet-to-be-announced date.
To make health care accessible and affordable to all, the WHO, the World Bank and other experts recommend among other things: mandatory and publicly subsidised health insurance scheme.
Experts say while the initiative is commendable, more will still need to be done in the area of enlightenment.
The partners in the project would need to do plenty of work in getting the message about the product across to the rural poor that are largely illiterate. This, they said, could be achieved by running the messages in the major indigenous languages on the operators’ network as well as in both print and electronic media.
