The National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) has announced that it has enrolled over 20 million Nigerians in the national health insurance scheme across the country.
The Acting Zonal Coordinator for the North Central Zone, covering Kwara, Niger, and Kogi States, Adamu Abdullahi, disclosed this during a forum in Ilorin. He explained that the forum was aimed at enlightening the public on the authority’s policies for ensuring best practices, noting that the current reforms are targeted at improving healthcare delivery in Nigeria.
He said the policies are focused on achieving Universal Health Coverage by 2030. According to him, the federal government is working towards enrolling at least 44 million Nigerians to enable more people access affordable healthcare services.
“We are enlightening the stakeholders about the increase in tariff. The NHIA is ensuring efficiency through quality in service delivery. We are increasing the tariff in terms of capitation; there is also an increase in terms of fee for service,” Abdullahi stated.
He explained that the capitation fee, which was previously set at ₦750, now stands at ₦1,450 for every registered individual under the health insurance scheme. He added that the authority has also raised standards for accreditation and reaccreditation to align with current healthcare demands, despite existing challenges.
According to him, these reforms are part of the activities introduced under the current leadership of the NHIA Director-General, Kelechi Ohiri. He further stated that President Bola Tinubu has made health insurance enrolment compulsory for all Nigerians to ensure that citizens have access to quality healthcare delivery.
“We are working towards ensuring a drug-free society under the NHIA medicine initiative. We are going to have NHIA-branded drugs that our enrollees can easily access,” Abdullahi added.
To further improve service delivery, he disclosed that the federal government has introduced the ‘One-Hour Referral Authorisation Code’ to reduce the waiting time for patients when they require referrals from primary to secondary healthcare.
Also speaking at the forum, the State Coordinator of the NHIA Kwara Office, Idayat Bello-Olaitan, commended the introduction of new intervention programmes by the authority. She listed the Comprehensive Emergency Obstetric and Newborn Care programme, designed to address the five leading causes of maternal mortality in Nigeria. These causes include haemorrhage, preeclampsia, sepsis, post-abortion complications, and obstructed labour.
She also highlighted the NHIA Free Fistula Programme and the Global Fund HIV-AIDS Drug Resistant Tuberculosis project as other key health interventions. “These programmes are crucial in scaling up the Universal Health Coverage and aligning with the Renewed Hope Agenda in the health sector as directed by the president,” she said.
Ms Bello-Olaitan further revealed that the NHIA will commence “mystery shopping,” a monitoring and evaluation exercise aimed at ensuring that health facilities comply with quality standards.
She stated, “The government is committed to ensuring that enrollees don’t suffer at the point of accessing services. This is also to mandate all health facilities give the right treatment to all enrollees. We demand that there be quality assurance at all the healthcare facilities.”