FHIS tasked on inclusive healthcare services

By Stanley Onyekwere

The management of the FCT Health Insurance Scheme (FHIS) have been asked to devise means of including terminal diseases and other life-threatening sicknesses in the health services of the agency.

The FCT Permanent Secretary, Mr Adesola Olusade, who gave the advice at the Public Presentation of FHIS Working Documents, yesterday in Abuja, also suggested that the aged be included as beneficiaries of the initiative.

Olusade, who noted that ailments, such as cancer, liver related problems, sickle cell, are highly expensive to manage, therefore called for the need to get donors and other stakeholders to support such expansion.

He said: “In order to adequately cover these broad spectrum of expansions, there will be need for managers of the Scheme to devise strategies that can woo in more Local and International Partners and Donor Agencies to identify with the Scheme.”

According to him, already, the Administration has set process in motion to give legal backing to the scheme to make i more inclusive in its coverage to wider spectrum of the FCT especially the poor, vulnerable and the disabled.

“In view of the importance of affordable and accessible healthcare delivery, it will interest you to know that His Excellency, President Muhammadu Buhari has also mandated the FCT Administration to ensure that the coverage of the health insurance scheme is expanded to cover all residents of the Territory, both formal and informal sectors.

“In a bid to actualize Mr. President’s mandate, we have on our part as an Administration, set in motion a process that will give the Scheme a legal framework in order to make the Scheme more inclusive in its coverage and operations, which will also capture the poor, vulnerable and the disabled. These categories of beneficiaries will also gain from the Basic Health Care Provision Fund(BHCPF). This Fund provides free insurance cover for them.

“It is important to bring to your notice that the BHCPF is a Federal Government Health Initiative which the FCT Administration has keyed into and met all the requirements for fund disbursement.

“ Already, over 9,000 poor and vulnerable in the FCT are currently being enrolled on this programme,” he added.

The Permanent secretary therefore mandated stakeholders to come up with modalities that will guarantee improved service delivery to beneficiaries of the Scheme, warning that the administration will not condone any form of misappropriation of funds.