Health Policy Research Group an (NGO),has urged the Federal
Government to resuscitate the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS)
free Maternal and Child Health programme to address the nation’s high
mortality rate.
Dr Felix Obi, a Researcher with the group made the call in an
interview on Sunday in Abuja.
Obi who identified the programme as NHIS-MDGs free maternal health
programme, attributed the nation’s high mortality on the collapse of the
programme , describing women and children as accounting for the
nation’s highest burden due to their vulnerability.
He however said that scaling up the programme would go a long way in ensuring drastic reduction in the nation’s mortality rate.
“Where we have problem in Nigeria is women dying while bearing
children, so if we must reduce women and childhood mortality rate, we
have to make available services needed by women of reproductive age and
children.
“We have to prioritise implementation of the National Health Act
which stipulates that Nigerians should have access to minimum basic
package of health which is universal health coverage,’’ Obi said.
Obi explained that the programme was initiated in 2008 against the
backdrop of nation’s performance on maternal and child health indices.
He however described the programme as an intervention scheme geared
toward addressing the high mortality among women and children by
increasing access to maternal and child health services through an
exemplified scheme.
The researcher blamed failure of the programme majorly on lack of
legislation with regard to its proper execution, failure of state
government to pay their counterpart funding among others.
Obi noted other challenges are lack of political support and
interference by state government, noting that political office holders
were used in implementing the programme instead of health commissioners.
Also, hiking number of enrollees by Health Maintenance Organisations (HMOs) among others.
Obi emphasized that the federal government terminated the project or
programme due to failure of states government to pay their counterpart
funds.
The researcher however called for legislation to ensure appropriate funding and its sustainability.
He identified ways to ensure adequate funding to include increase of
one per cent basic healthcare provision funds to four per cent adding
that 70 per cent of the said amount could only cater for the children.
“The benefit package for pregnant women in the scheme covered
services provided at the primary healthcare levels while complication
were referred to secondary level while the benefits for under five
children covered primary care intervention.
“Each pregnant woman enrolled in the programme then was expected to
graduate six weeks post partum while a child graduates on reaching five
years.
“Federal and state government should show commitment by providing
adequate funding in a predictable and regular manner, reduce disruption
in service delivery and ensure continuity among others.
“States should explore innovative financing strategies to raise more
domestic resources to increase fiscal space for financing free maternal
child health similar to SDGs financing risk protection programmes for
achieving Universal Health Coverage.
NAN reports that the NIHS-MDGs free maternal and child health programme which commenced in Nov. 2008 stopped in Nov. 2015.
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