To achieve universal health coverage (UHC), Nigeria should be demarcated into 17,000 health blocks each to be made roughly of 10,000 prospective enrollees into the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS).Immediate Past President of the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA), Honourary Professor of Medicine and Healthcare Council Advisor, World Medical Association (WMA), Dr. Kayode Obembe, in a Road Map to UHC issued at the Annual General Meeting (AGM) of Premier Medicaid International (PMI) held recently at Hypertension Clinic, Iyaganku, Ibadan, Oyo State, said: “PMI takes cognizance of the various attempts made to make Nigerian citizen healthy through ‘Health for all by the year 2000’, Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) – 2015 and now Sustainable Development Goals – 2030 (SDGs), all to achieve UHC.
“The whole country should be demarcated into “Health Blocks” each to be made roughly 10,000 prospective enrollees. For a population of 170million, there will be 17,000 health blocks. “All the health blocks must be assigned to Health Maintenance Organisations (HMOs) by NHIS by open balloting and random selection.”Obembe who is also the Vice Chairman & Chief Executive Officer,
Premier Medicaid Nigeria Limited HMO said all wards within a Health Block should be organized in Ward Health Organisations (wHO) units, with the traditional ruler in that ward as the Patron. He said the Organogram of the wHO cascades down from Chairman (Board of Trustees) to council, to association and household enrollees and there should be a healthcare provider at each ward; where there is no doctor at all, a doctor from National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) can be posted there.
Obembe said each Health Block should be headed by a consultant that is a Fellow National Post-graduate Medical College of Physicians (FNPMC) or Fellow of West African College of surgeons (FWACS). He said Residency Training Programme should make it compulsory that a Resident Doctor should spend six months in a health block as part of acquiring community experience towards becoming a consultant.
The former NMA President said there should be a Health Tax Fund with the appropriate input from the private sector and that the HMOs should be the accounting officer in each of the health blocks and any HMO found fraudulent should be prosecuted. “This is the surest way towards attaining the goal of UHC,” he said.
Source:The Guardian
