NHIS bags ¢480 billion

Ghana's National Health Insurance Council (NHIS) has received an amount of ¢480 billion from the National Health Insurance Levy (NHIL) and contributions from the Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT) as seed money for the scheme.

Announcing this at a day's workshop organised by the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital to educate its management staff on the NHIS in Accra yesterday, Nana Kwesi Amo, a resource person, said the amount was part of the targeted ¢1.2 trillion needed to set the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) in full operation.

Nana Amo said the amount did not include contributions from individuals in the various districts.

He said the scheme had completed the address system which would help, among other things, in identifying the poor who qualify for free medical care and also help in research that might determine the prevalence of diseases in individual communities.

The poor, under the NHIS, are adults who are unemployed and do not receive any identifiable and constant support from elsewhere for survival.

Nana Amo said the programme was delaying because heads of households were mostly not available to be interviewed for the right data on families to be collected.