Maduako Igbokwe I Friday, Nov. 24, 2023
AWKA, Nigeria – Anambra State Government has denied the rumour of scrapping the state health insurance scheme christened, Anambra State Health Insurance Agency (ASHIA) .
There have been rumours that the state government is finding it difficult to run and would soon close the scheme, designed to provide coverage for health care and related services.
The state commissioner for health, Dr Afam Obidike made the clarification with selected journalists in Awka Anambra State on Friday.
According to Obidike the scheme has over N3 billion and it is alive and active.
He also disclosed that the ministry has ,what he described as universal health coverage for the state and it addresses all health challenges in the state through ASHIA .
According to him,ASHIA started with 60 persons and before the present administration assumed office it had risen to 160 but today it has over 260 persons.
“We are expanding the package and we are now treating prostrate cancer . We enrolled in the tricycle riders into the scheme” he stated.
Obidike said that because of the successes recorded, the state government increased the budgetary allocations to over 163 percent in the 2024 financial year.
According to him, the increments in the ministry of health is more than that of ministry of works.
The Commissioner said that in order to achieve better productivity in health care service, it has clock in device that checks attendance of staff.
“If you go to work ,you you tap your hand in the device and it will clock into my phone. It tells me when you come to work and when you leaves work. This is to ensure that we give our people the best. We don’t just employ without monitoring personnel movement” he stated.
According to him, most staff in the state public hospitals got half payment because they did work accordingly.
“We are being strategic, building our public hospitals because most of the private hospitals are interested only in their profits. We in public hospitals ,we are interested in rendering service to the people” he said .
He also stated that ,the ministry is recruiting 500 staff in the primary healthcare service delivery and 350 for hospitals .
Obidike said that the state government is also building blood banks in some strategic hospitals and equipping 17 hospitals with modern facilities across the state .
According to him, due to the successes of the scheme many states are coming to learn how we are succeeding.
He stated that due to successes in ASHIA,World health organization WHO recognized Anambra State as one of the best in the healthcare adoption in the country.
The Commissioner appealed to people to graciously adopt at least one person from their families into ASHIA.
