KECHEMA tasks CSOs, labour unions, media on advocacy, information dissemination on healthcare contributory scheme
The Executive Secretary of the agency, Dr Jafar Augie, gave the task on Wednesday at the closing of a two-day training organised in collaboration with Integrated Health Programme (IHP).
Augie said “the scheme is for all of us as members of society and stakeholders at the same time; it is not for the government, and therefore it is up to us to push it to succeed or otherwise. He added that “we should embrace the scheme and own it as the government has done its part by giving the scheme the law and operational guidelines.
“No free meal now in the world; we have to contribute to the development of quality healthcare delivery.
“God can challenge us if we choose not to be merciful to the public.”
Augie enjoined stakeholders to ensure the sustainability of prudent management of contributors’ funds, saying that the responsibility was on stakeholders. According to him, the agency has the mandate of ensuring quality healthcare service delivery to all and sundry in the state.
He commended the participants, whom he described as “all important members of technical working group and in-puted pro-actively in shaping the scheme.
“They are important stakeholders whose support is practically indispensable for the agency.
“We shall remain ever grateful. We are deeply grateful to our development partners, the USAID and it agencies, health finance and governance and Integrated Health Project (IHP), among others,” the secretary said.
On her part, the Health Financial Advisor of IHP, Dr Aisha Aminu-Senchi, said that the IHP was working with state governments to strengthen and advance operationalization of state health insurance schemes toward attainment of universal health coverage.
She explained that poor citizens might not be able to pay for themselves, saying that productive and rich citizens should be paying for the non-productive and dependants.
News credit: NAN