Communities Jostle For NHIS Enrolment

No fewer than 50 rural
communities in the South-East are at various stages of enrolment into the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), an official has said.
Deputy General Manager and Zonal Coordinator of the scheme, Mrs Gertrude Ossi who made the disclosure in an interview in Enugu, last Tuesday said that 200,000 people drawn from the rural communities were at various levels of participation in the scheme.
She said the focus on communities followed the success of the scheme in the formal sector where most public servants across the zone had been captured.
“The NHIS has covered a lot of grounds with the enrollment of most members of the organised service sector in the South-East,  our target is now the informal sector involving rural communities,” she said.
According to her, NHIS rollout for the informal sector in the zone targeted 300,000 enrollment for 2014.
“So far, no fewer than 200,000 people have been captured, and they are either at various stages of enrollment or accessing health. “For instance, at Ariaria Community in Aba South Local Government Area of Abia, we have over 50,000 prospective enrollment. “They have formed their Board of Trustees (BOT) in each of the sections and have sent their letters of intent to the Corporate Affairs Commission for registration,” she said.
Ossi said that no fewer than 20,000 prospective enrollment had also been captured in Umu Iziye Nguru, in Aboh Mbaise Local Government Area of Imo.
“They are already accessing health care at a centre built by the community,” she said, adding that they had been advocacy campaigns for residents of the rural communities to understand the benefits of the scheme.
“Our ultimate target is to have all the rural communities in the zone captured, but for this current year we want to register 300,000 people,” Ossi said.