The Kaduna State Primary Health Care Board (SPHCB) has appealed to the state and local government workers to enrol in Primary Healthcare Centres (PHCs) for health insurance services.

The Executive Secretary of the board, Dr Hamza Abubakar made the appeal in Abuja on Saturday, during a two-day meeting with Chairmen of the 23 local government councils of the state.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the meeting was organised by the Kaduna State Contributory Health Management Authority (KADCHMA), to find sustainable and innovative funding for healthcare services in the state.

The meeting was supported by Save the Children International, Partnership to Engage, Reform and Learn (PERL) and Lifiya programme.

Abubakar explained that the more enrolees a facility has the more money that comes to the facility, which could be used to improve medical supplies and facilities.

This, according to him, will improve the quality of service delivery in PHCs across the state and reposition them to favourably compete with private facilities.

He, however, decried a situation where the majority of civil servants in the state enroled in private facilities for the health scheme, thereby depriving the public facilities of a huge source of funding.

“It is sad that the majority of government workers enroled in private hospitals as against PHCs, thereby depriving the PHCs of the huge opportunity for more funding needed to improve the quality of service delivery.

“I am therefore, appealing to the council chairmen to encourage their workers who are yet to enrol to do so and select PHCs so that our public facilities will have increased access to funding opportunities.

“For workers that have enrolled already, we can have a conversation with them to consider transferring their service to PHCs. This will go a long way in improving the quality of health services in the state,” he said.

The executive secretary further urged the council chairmen to work with the management of KADCHMA to encourage community members to enrol in the health insurance scheme.

He said that the resources going to the facilities from KADCHMA and the National Health Insurance Authority, through the Basic Health Care Provisions Funds, were already transforming health services in PHCs.

Dr Sani Abubakar, Programme Manager, Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI), pointed out that 7.8 million of the more than 10 million estimated population of the state were multidimensionality poor.

Abubakar said that when compared with other North-West states, Kaduna performed very poorly in the health dimension and was the second most deprived state.

“Not only that, Kaduna state is also one of the worst states to be a child in Nigeria due to high neonatal, infant and children under five mortality.

“Kaduna State is equally the sixth worst state in skilled birth delivery and the ninth worst state in women receiving postnatal care within two days after birth.

“This is why health insurance schemes, particularly the Vulnerable Group Funds (VGF) are critical to increase access to quality and affordable health care services to improve the health indices in the state,” he said.

He explained that VGFs are tailored health insurance funds targeting high-risk populations, aiming to narrow healthcare gaps through customised coverage.

Source: News Agency of Nigeria