Date: 2020-11-17

Residents of Kwara State have been urged to take advantage of the ongoing registration of the people into the mandatory Health Insurance Scheme it together by the administration of Abdulrazak Abdulrahaman, the state governor.

Explaining the basis of this call, the Executive Secretary of the health insurance agency, Dr Olubumi Jetawo-Winter, in Ilorin on Monday, while addressing the journalists about the scheme, said that the effort of the agency is getting reasonable numbers of people registered for the scheme, most especially, people in informal sector.

The agency boss, said that the scheme is targeted largely at making healthcare services affordable to the vast majority of Kwarans.

She further explained that 200 enumerators, 32 supervisors and two separate companies had been engaged to oversee the ongoing registration of beneficiaries, added that 59 healthcare facilities, out of 200 already inspected, had been accredited for the programme.

According to her "our plans is to capture no fewer than 3.2 million residents of the state in our database for the provision of healthcare services".

"So far we are in the third week of the 12 weeks of the registration exercise and we have already captured over 100,000 registration data. We are hoping that by the week 12 which is early next year we should have captured a good number of the Kwara residents".

"The benefit package ranges from simple ailments like cold, malaria and it goes on to secondary services like surgeries, childbirth, antenatal etc. "As a result of the launch, we now have indigent who never had access to healthcare going through surgeries, we have had a couple of childbirths under the scheme. All these were 100 percent subsidized for the beneficiaries" she said.