Health care in Nigeria is not well developed. It requires a lot of implementations of good policies but we can not say that there is no progress in the last few years. In recent years we can easily see the development in primary health care in Nigeria. One of the drastic developments seen over the years that has changed the entire Nigerian health care system is NHIS ( national health insurance scheme). It is one of the best schemes seen in Nigeria that has changed the entire health care system in Nigeria. There is a lot expected from NHIS Nigeria.
NHIS :
Nigeria is adopted to improve health care in Nigeria. It is specially developed for low-income groups. Health care workers are the key operator of the scheme. Started in 1999, NHIS is a social tool that attains equity in health care. Rural areas in Nigeria, where there is a lack of funds for health, NHIS is really important. You can easily imagine the value of health insurance in improving health care in such a poor country.
With vigorous government efforts, all the hospitals in Nigeria are now registered with NHIS. Afterall health care workers are the main operators of NHIS Nigeria. There are various methods used to spread the awareness, knowledge and uptake of NHIS among private health care workers.
There are different stages to achieve this big thing in Nigerian health care. A study was conducted to know about the people and their responses towards Nhis. This happened in stages. These were :
1st stage
Health care has been divided into large, medium and small out of 104 hospitals, 30 clinics and 26 maternity homes. In this stage, there were 12 big hospitals with 6 health care providers, 127 medium hospitals that comprised 2 health care providers and 8 small hospitals with 2 health care providers. All over there were about 342 health care providers. Primary health care in Nigeria was also developed.
2nd stage
Stage 2 involves optimising the allocation of the sample to determine the number of questionnaires for each stratum. After calculating it was found that there were 342 health care providers. while in large health care there were 72 health care workers. The calculations resulted in that number of persons interviewed were 34. Similarly, medium and small health care facilities were done.
3rd stage
The third stage involves the selection of health care facilities. The 12 large health care facilities were selected for creating samples. Also, 64 medium and 4 small health care facilities were selected for the study.
4th stage
After selecting the health care facilities, the next step is to select eligible respondents.
Result
The response rate of 180 private health care workers was 88.9%. The response was from more males than females and from more doctors than nurses.
Details of NHIS
It is a type of formal health insurance. It also aims at rural areas in Nigeria. The cost of health care is shared by both employer and employee. The employee’s share is equal to 5% of his salary and employer’s share is 10% of the salary he\she gives. It is also a system where young subsidise old and rich subsidise poor. It ensures health care benefits to every Nigerian. It aims at protecting families from large medical bills. It also limits the cost of health care services. It also provides funds for primary health care to ensure better facilities and improvement.
Benefits of NHIS Nigeria
There are two main benefits of NHIS. Firstly improvement in health care sectors and secondly low medical bills. The burden of health care is shared between the government and private sectors due to NHIS. It also increases the employment opportunity in the health care sector. It also reduces brain drain in Nigeria. The government also funds primary health care in rural areas in Nigeria under NHIS. It all will also lead to economic prosperity in Nigeria.
People enrolled in NHIS gets other benefits such as hospital care, outpatient care, pharmaceutical care, etc. Under this policy, only 10% of payment is done for the price of drugs.
Scope of NHIS :
NHIS covers different segments of society and for this purpose, it has developed various programmes. These includes:
- Formal sector social health insurance programme
- Mobile health
- Social health insurance programme
- Tertiary institution social health insurance programme
- Community-based social health insurance programme
It also aims at vulnerable groups like:
- Pregnant women
- Children under five
- Prison inmates
- Old age people
Limitations:
One of the limitations of NHIS is that it includes non-dispensing expensive drugs. One more limitation seen is non -availability of NHIS forms. Poor attitude of primary health care workers makes the conditions worse.
Conclusion
NHIS is one of the big things that is going to happen in Nigeria. It already has shown a great response in Nigeria but with better implications, it will work more efficiently. If everything goes at a great pace, then it could be the best thing in Nigeria. No one could stop Nigeria from becoming a developed country. Afterall a healthy country is always a developed country.