If there was any doubt about the commitment of the Buhari administration to the nation’s healthcare delivery, and how it could work for the common man, it has been removed by the appointment of a renowned pro-people professor of medicine, Yusuf Usman, as the Executive Secretary of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS). It has long been in the public domain that the Nigerian healthcare system has been badly bruised by corruption and inefficiency, creativity is needed to bring Nigeria up to an acceptable, even if minimum, standard.
While Nigeria is seen as the Giant of Africa, smaller countries like Rwanda and Kenya are scoring huge goals in their health insurance schemes. The two countries cited above and many others spread across Africa have a minimum health insurance coverage of 50 percent. In Nigeria’s case however, there is no statistics to show the level of coverage, perhaps because it is far too dismal and shameful.
Clearly, something urgent needed to be done. Men of strong character and goodwill are needed to pilot and rescue the nation’s healthcare sector from going under. The level of decay was striking. In his quest to bring about genuine change and offer leadership with integrity, President Buhari decided that he needed a person of unimpeachable integrity to pilot the nation’s huge health insurance industry and make life better for millions of Nigerians.
Given the depth of the rot in the system, it was clear to the president that he needed a person whose hands were not soiled. A painstaking search led the president to extend a hand of fellowship to Professor Yusuf Usman, a professor of Haematology-Oncology and Bone Marrow Transplantation. Yusuf’s record of excellent service and personal integrity recommended him readily. He was a professor at St. Jude Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, United States of America, for a while. He graduated in medicine from Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria in 1982 and worked in the University Teaching Hospital from 1984 -1989. He worked in the United Kingdom from 1990 -1995 from where he moved first to South Carolina, USA, where he rose to become a fellow in Paediatric Hematology/Oncology in 1998.
He is a man that has the skill and pedigree of establishing a culture of collaboration and integration and building effective teams that always deliver on results. Since his appointment early August this year, Professor Yusuf has vowed to ensure that enrollees to the health insurance scheme, who were being terribly shortchanged and treated with disdain in most hospitals, get real value for their money. This, naturally, is bound to put the newly appointed Executive Secretary of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) on a collision course with many Health Management Organisations (HMOs) who are believed to be responsible for the sustained suffering of enrollees while they smile to the bank.
For Professor Yusuf, he is not out to fight anyone playing by the rules and making legitimate gains. This, therefore, means that any HMO that is out to ensure enrollees are treated with dignity and respect is going to enjoy the best friendship of the NHIS Executive Secretary. NHIS itself was set up for the enrollee, but healthcare financing must include the organisation as the regulator, as well as the HMOs and the hospitals as critical stakeholders.
Sadly, in a typical Nigerian setting, in no time the whole arrangement was skewed against the enrollee, and more for the HMOs. Whereas the NHIS strives to pay the HMOs three months upfront, many of them were going to the ridiculous extent of issuing dud cheques to hospitals that rendered service to the enrollee. In no time, the hospitals took a cue and started humiliating subscribers to the scheme.
It was all too clear that unless something was done, and urgently too, the nation’s healthcare system was going to collapse. And since the Act setting up NHIS gives it the power to regulate and impose what is in the law, the new NHIS under Professor Yusuf is working to give the enrollee the power to choose. This will engender decency, efficiency and push the HMOs and even the hospitals to compete among themselves to attract more enrollees by giving them the best service, and significantly thereby transform the nation’s healthcare delivery and healthier citizens.
The National Health Insurance Scheme, established under Act 35 of 1999 by the Federal Government of Nigeria, is aimed at providing easy access to healthcare for all Nigerians at an affordable cost through various prepayment systems, Prof Yusuf, the new Executive Secretary, is totally committed to making sure NHIS rises up to its responsibility of securing universal coverage and access to adequate and affordable healthcare in order to improve the health status of Nigerians.
Within two months of Yusuf’s appointment, confidence is gradually restored in the health insurance industry. Knowing he cannot go it alone, the NHIS boss has been meeting with staff members of the regulatory organisation to get them to key in to his noble vision with optimal and selfless service with integrity and decency. Whereas a few HMOs have also accepted to change from their bad ways, there are others that are predictably too deeply entrenched in shameless corruption that seem to have vowed to fight Professor Yusuf to standstill.
Professor Yusuf must not, as he promised, hesitate to apply the full force of the law on any HMO who has continued to dig deeper in its anti-people ways. This is going to be in keeping with the avowed determination of President Buhari to remove all bad eggs in the system, however deeply entrenched. The one thing that has become very clear to all is Professor Yusuf’s belief that the health insurance scheme holds a major hope for the common man to have access to quality health services. Whenever hopes and expectations are raised, there is bound to be intense pressure to deliver. But as stated earlier, this is not Professor Yusuf’s fight alone.
As the Change Begins With Me mantra suggests, we must all strive to play our little and big parts in helping him to actualise the noble vision he set forth, in the overall interest and benefit of all of Nigeria. The deep-seated notion that the NHIS is for the elite, is already giving way to optimism.
Uba studies Mass Communication at the Nile University of Nigeria, Abuja.
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