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Kaduna Maternal Accountability Mechanism (KADMAM), in collaboration with the Contributory Health Management Authority (KADCHMA), has begun scaling up the enrollment of informal and maginalised groups in the state’s contributory health scheme.
The engagement is also in collaboration with Ward Development Committee, supported by Partnership to Engage, Reform and Learn- Engaged Citizens (PERL-EC) and Lafiya Programme.
At a meeting to sensitise groups and associations on Friday in Kaduna, the Co-chair of KADMAM, Mustapha Jumare, said the engagement was to improve on informal sector participation of women and other excluded groups in the contributory health scheme, to reduce out of pocket expenditure.
Jumare, represented by Mr. Isah Gidado, added that the objective was to contribute to an increase in the number of enrollees accessing health care services in the state, especially the normally excluded group.
He said that at KADMAM, they helped awakening people’s awareness on issues of health at various levels of the state through evidence-based advocacy in ensuring that funds meant to carter for health were properly and judiciously used.
“We generate evidence from Ministry of Finance, Planning, and Budget Comission and KADCHMA, then we use the information to advocate to government on what is lacking in the services,” he said.
Jumare called on the public to enroll in the contributory health scheme, noting that it was affordable, flexible and covered wide range of ailments.
Also, the State Team Lead of PERL-EC, Mr. Abel Adejo, said the meeting was prompted by the small number of people who were registering on the scheme, in spite of its affordability and flexibility.
He said they would unravel the reasons and bottlenecks behind the low registration and ensure remediation by sensitising groups and associations, by informing and convincing their members on the benefits of the scheme.
Adejo lamented that registration of the informal sector in the scheme was below 1,000 in spite of their large number in the state.
He said at PERL-EC, they worked in ensuring that services of such kinds not provided in communities were available and barriers of accessing them were addressed, for more people to register.
Also, the Director-General of KADCHMA, Malam Abubakar Hassan, lamented that the informal sector’s enrollments in the scheme were poor.
He said bringing in stakeholders in the engagement was to ensure support to the process of upscaling the informal sector’s enrollment by understanding the challenges identified as reasons behind the poor enrollment.
Hassan said the engagement with the stakeholders would reemphasise the importance of the concept and beyond that, to test what had been done so far in the last two years.
He further said they would leverage on the strengths and capacities of the stakeholders to woo the private sector and individuals into the scheme.
“At the end we want to re-echo the reason why we gather the stakeholders here and their contributions towards the enrollment process of the informal sector into the scheme.
“We want to ensure that as they leave the meeting, they leave as ambassadors of the scheme in Kaduna and beyond that, being able to educate and convince the people on the benefits of the scheme.”
Hassan explained that KADCHMA, as an institution in the state, was established to bring ease in provision and accessing health facilities across all the wards in the state.
He said, accessing the scheme costs N10, 650 per individual for one year, which they were working on modalities of installment payments to span within two months for a year subscribtion of the service.
“At certain point within someone’s contributions where one pays 60 to 75 per cent, one will begin to access the service, knowing fully that within two months, one finishes paying subscription money,” Hassan said.
“Also a maximum of six members of a household can benefit from the scheme at the rate of N57,990.”
He disclosed that their moves in ensuring flexibility in mode of payment for subscribing to the service would be a minimum of N200 into ones contributory wallet.
Speaking on behalf of the Association of Women in Trade and Agriculture, the state Coordinator, Hajiya Hadiza Abdulaziz, said convincing market women on the scheme would be uneasy, however the benefits and advantage.
She, however, pledged to create massive awareness to them and to painstakingly educate them on the benefits of the scheme which would translate massively into reducing their financial expenses on health.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that in attendance at the engagement were members of physically challenged groups, association of artisans, small and medium scale entrepreneurs, association of commercial motorcyclists, among others.(NAN)
