…urges partnership to strengthen health financing
The Edo State Governor, Mr. Godwin Obaseki, has reaffirmed his administration’s commitment to ensuring a resilient and efficient health system to sustain quality healthcare to Edo people
Obaseki gave the assurance when he received the General Manager, South-South Zone of the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA), Ajodi Nuhu and other members of the body, who were on a courtesy visit at the Government House, Benin City.
He said that his administration has declared its healthcare goals for the state and was working towards policies to achieve the goals.
Obaseki said, “Our people are our priority and healthcare is one major service we believe we must render to our people because we must have a healthy population to have people to govern.’
He continued: “Over the years, financing healthcare has been a major challenge, which is one of the reasons that led to the establishment of the NHIA. Unfortunately, it has not met the expectations and responsibility it was established for.
“That gap led us to set up our own state health insurance scheme. I am glad that we are collaborating and the target is to care for our people. Whatever we need to do in terms of counter funding to access more financing for healthcare for our people, we are ready to. I have not received any request for counterpart funding and we declined.”
According to the governor, “We are working on having a service point and restructuring our primary healthcare centers so that more of our people will have a point of care.
“We are redesigning our healthcare system in the state so that our people can have access to quality healthcare. We are emphasizing more on primary care and collaborating with the private sectors for secondary and tertiary care.
“You are a sort of partner that we need to work with in the state. Since you are a health financing company, we would like to see you operate more like a private sector company and a federal government parastatal as we need to see much more market responsiveness and efficiency.”
Earlier, Ajodi commended the governor for his foresight in establishing the Edo State Health Insurance Agency.
He said, “I want to commend you sir for the establishment of Edo State Health Insurance Agency which has been collaborating with NHIA. With the basic healthcare provision fund, we have covered over 34,000 and can do more with counter funding and equity funding.”
