Healthcare: FHIS targets coverage of 500,000 FCT residents

By Stanley Onyekwere

The FCT Health Insurance Scheme (FHIS) has revealed strategic plans to provide insurance cover for no fewer than five hundred thousand people in Abuja, the nation’s capital city.
Making this disclosure yesterday in Abuja, the FHIS Director, Dr. Ahmed Danfulani, expressed optimism that the target will be achieved by the time the agency rolls out all its programmes, envisaged to engineer a robust insurance coverage of the populace especially the vulnerable.
Danfulani, who spoke with newsmen after making a presentation on FHIS activities and programmes to the FCT Minister, Malam Muhammad Musa Bello, however disclosed that presently, about two hundred thousand people are covered by the scheme.
He explained that the agency has so many programmes as part of workable measures towards improving health insurance coverage in FCT, which in turn boosts efficient healthcare delivery to people in the Territory.
He said: “We have so many programmes to especially carry the poor and vulnerable persons; we have programmes to take care of the retirees; we have programmes to take care of the pregnant women and children under five, apart from the formal and informal sector.
“And this year, we are hoping to cover not less than half a million people. By the time we roll out all our programmes, we should be able to cover half a million population.
Currently, we have about two hundred thousand people covered by the scheme.”
On the meeting with the Minister, the FHIS boss said: “It was to introduce to the minister the important working document that FCT health insurance scheme is going to be working with. Each of those documents were introduced to him.
“We thank God that the FCT Minister was impressed with what we are doing so far. He also encouraged us to improve on our information dissemination and publicity.
“He noted that even though thatwe have been trying, so we are going to harp more on that. He also encouraged that we should engage very highly professional people to help us make our agency better.”