The Executive Secretary of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), Prof Mohammed Nasir Sambo, has projected that all Nigerians will be captured in the scheme by 2030.
He made the projection while inspecting facilities at the Garki Hospital, Abuja, recently.
“Our aim is that by the year 2030, all Nigerians will have had the opportunity to get into the social health insurance system as a principle of solidarity, as a mechanism for cross subsidization and effective healthcare financing,” Prof Sambo said.
To meet the target, the NHIS boss said the scheme is fine-tuning its policies and programmes to engender closer collaboration with healthcare providers, health maintenance organisations and sundry stakeholders.
His words, “What we have been doing in the last two years is to engender value re-orientation that will make the scheme a credible and result-oriented organization; entrenching transparency and accountability in the entire operations of the national health insurance scheme as well as accelerate the attainment of universal coverage coming with so many initiatives.”
He added, “We say that we wanted to reduce the waiting period to six hours and when we look at the structure available at the level of NHIS, we realize that we just made a promise that we cannot fulfill. We need to do some structural changes that will allow us to be able to adhere to the six hours.”
Prof Sambo promised quick structural changes to decentralise the activities of NHIS by empowering the states with necessary human resources and infrastructure to “perform the stewardship role.”
