The National Institute of Policy and Strategic Studies,( NIPSS) has called on President Muhammadu Buhari to urgently repeal the National Health Insurance (NHIS) Act.
The institute urged him to replace the Act with the National Health Insurance Commission Bill, adding that doing so would make healthcare delivery more accessible to the populace.
Representative of the institute, Group Capt. Mohammed Gumi (rtd) made the call during the third national summit of the legislative network for Universal Health Coverage (UHC) in Abuja .
The summit was organized by the National Assembly with the support of the development Research and Projects Center ( dRPC) under the Partnership for Advocacy in Child and Family Health@Scale.
He said that one of the major findings of a study done by the institute revealed that adequate funding was key to boosting access to quality healthcare to all citizens.
He said: “Virtually all the countries visited during the study spent greater proportion of their budget on health in addition to putting in place effective policy framework and institutional mechanism for utilisation and oversight”.
Gumi added that the nation’s healthcare delivery system suffers from non- compliance with the payment of negotiated premium by labour.
He said dearth of reliable data compounded by low deployment of ICT in the health sector hampered effective planning and funding of Universal Health Coverage ( UHC).
He said: “Poor policy coordination, institutional fragmentation and weak vertical horizontal synergy across levels of government makes it difficult for the nation to attain health status”.
He called on the president to convene a special session of the National Council of State to deliberate on the modalities for fast-tracking the attainment of UHC.
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