By Kemi Akintokun
Mr Tosin Runsewe, Founder, AfyACare Nigeria Limited, has called for collaborative efforts to scale up the number of Nigerians under the National Health Insurance Scheme for easy access to healthcare delivery.
Runsewe made the call at the Healthcare Federation of Nigeria (HFN) Annual Conference in Lagos.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the theme of the conference was “Building the Healthcare of Our Future.
Runsewe, a panelist at one of the conference sessions on “Healthcare Investment and Financing”, noted that the signing of the National Health Insurance National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) Bill 2022 was commendable.
”Today we have just about five per cent of Nigeria population covered in every health insurance, what do we do to get this figured up to 50 per cent or more is the most important question we should all ask ourselves.
”The more people are able to afford healthcare, the better the quality and standard that people will receive.
”The government has made a huge step forward with the signing of the NHIA act and deserved accolades, but that is just the first step.
”We need to implement it in a way that will ensure majority of Nigerians are covered and have the right insurance policy that will enable them to walk into any hospital to access good care,” he said.
He added that the training capacity in the country should be increased in order to increase the number of medical students graduating annually to meet our healthcare demands.
”There is a lot of development finance institutions who wants to invest large sum of money in the sector and some returns.
”No matter how much we invest in this sector, we need to fix the people problem. We need to see how we can expand our training capacity,” he said.
He commended the HFN for organising the programme with the aim of proffering solutions to some of the challenges in the health sector. (NAN)
