The Lagos State governor, Mr Babajide Sanwo-Olu, yesterday urged residents of the state to register for the health insurance scheme the government introduced towards ensuring improved healthcare delivery.
Subscription to the scheme, Sanwo-Olu said, would enable the government to prioritise its healthcare programmes to enhance its quality and affordability to the residents.
The governor made the call at the on-going Medic West Africa
Conference holding at the Eko Convention Centre, Victoria Island.
Sanwo-Olu said the health insurance coverage must be scaled up as a condition to build the confidence of private investors in the scheme, which, he said, was created to remove the burden on residents by providing affordable healthcare.
“This is how developed countries are able to tackle their health financing and access,” he said. Sanwo-Olu added that for health to be completely affordable and accessible, people must subscribe to the health insurance scheme, which coverage the state needed to increase in terms of registration.
“What it means is that everybody will not take ill at once. But the financing process would be in a way that anyone who needs it at any given time will have full access to it, because such person contributed to the scheme. Also, the option of health facilities to be used by a subscriber would include private hospitals. All of these are brought out to make healthcare accessible and affordable,” the governor said.
Sanwo-Olu disclosed that his administration would soon start the process of revamping its road ambulance scheme, with the objective of creating more ambulance points across the state.
The overhaul, he pointed out, would include deployment of emergency responders at each ambulance point to give palliative treatment to the injured before they are transported to hospitals.
Sanwo-Olu, who inspected the latest medical technology equipment exhibited at the event, said the state government would be leveraging its public-private partnership (PPP) policy to acquire some of the advanced technologies displayed at the conference.
In the course of the exhibition, the governor sealed equipment supply deals with two firms to equip the state-owned teaching hospital with some advanced medical equipment.
