Health Insurance Scheme: Kwara plans to capture 3.2 million residents

By Steve Oni, Ilorin

Kwara state Health Insurance Agency (KW-HIA), recently launched by Governor AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq,
has put necessary machinery in motion to capture no fewer than 3.2 million residents in its database for the provision of healthcare services.

Executive Secretary of the Agency, Dr. Olubumi Jetawo-Winter, who briefed journalists in Ilorin, the state capital, on Monday, said the scheme is aimed principally at making healthcare services affordable and accessible to the vast majority of residents in the state.

Dr Jetawo-Winter added that so far the agency had enumerated and captured no fewer than 100,000 people in its data base, while it has also accessed 200 health facilities, saying 59 of them are up and doing.

She said: “So far we are in the third week of the 12 weeks of the registration exercise and we have already registered and captured over 100,000 people in our data base. We are hoping that by week 12 which is early next year we should have captured a good number of Kwara residents.

“The benefits of the package for beneficiaries include treatment of simple ailments like cold, malaria
and it goes on to secondary services like surgeries, childbirth, antenatal etc..

“As a result of the launch, we have indigent people who never had access to healthcare going through surgeries, we have had a couple of childbirths under the scheme. All these were 100 percent subsidized for the beneficiaries.

“Since the launch a lot of activities have been ongoing. Registration is ongoing across all the 193 wards of the 16 local government areas of the state. The purpose of that is to make sure that every resident of the state is registered.

“For the purpose of the health insurance, we have divided the population into three segments. Segment one involves the indigent people and those people are 100 percent subsidized by the state government through the equity fund that is derived from the one percent consolidated revenue fund that comes from the state once a year.

“The second segment of the population is the informal sector. The premium of the people in this category has been put at N6,000 per person per year. The premiums are not arbitrary figures. They were scientifically determined putting all our health risks into a basket and determining the cost of providing such healthcare per year.

“The third segment is the formal sector. This sector is actually divided into two parts, namely public and private sectors. The premium is N9,000 per annum per year.”