• Thursday, March 28, 2024
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MTN Nigeria, CarePay Nigeria sign pact to drive universal health coverage

MTN Nigeria has signed a partnership agreement with CarePay Nigeria, a health fintech company, to jointly grow health insurance coverage among millions of Nigerians.

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The partnership is expected to connect MTN Nigeria’s subscribers to CarePay’s digital ‘healthcare marketplace’ in order to significantly improve access to affordable quality healthcare in Nigeria.

It is also expected that both parties will in the next few weeks, collaborate with accredited health insurers and healthcare providers to roll out a digital ‘healthcare marketplace’ accessible via web and app, for distribution and administration of a wide range of retail health schemes encompassing innovative health schemes as well as traditional health insurance plans.

Findings show that many Nigerians lack awareness about the benefits and importance of health insurance coverage such that the distribution of health insurance products in Nigeria has remained inefficient and costly, resulting in millions of Nigerians, mostly those within the informal sector, having no health coverage whatsoever – and relying mostly on cash payments at the point of care.

Consequently, this can delay access to care, or push Nigerians to resort to poor quality substitutes due to lack of resources, and can even push millions of Nigerians into poverty each year due to catastrophic healthcare expenditure.

But with this new partnership, Nigerians can leverage CarePay’s health benefits management platform, already widely used by over 5 million users and over 4,000 healthcare providers in Nigeria and Kenya. This will also leverage MTN Nigeria’s ‘last mile’ capabilities as a leading mobile network operator, to achieve improved awareness and efficient distribution of health insurance products to all Nigerians, and effective administration of health schemes by healthcare providers and health insurers.

“We consider this important partnership as fundamental to improving Nigeria’s health indices by growing access to affordable quality healthcare for all Nigerians. With the convergence of various technologies including mobile telephony, cloud, internet, data and Artificial Intelligence (AI), it will be inevitable that these convergences will work to the benefit of the entire healthcare ecosystem,” Amaechi Ndili, executive chairman, CarePay Nigeria, said.

According to Ndili, MTN Nigeria’s strong brand and reach combined with CarePay’s proven healthcare technology provides the perfect, trust-based platform that allows seamless transactions between patients, healthcare providers and health insurers.

On her part, Lynda Saint-Nwafor, chief enterprise business officer of MTN Nigeria Plc, said the partnership gives MTN the opportunity to make quality healthcare affordable and accessible to millions of Nigerians.

“By simply dialling a short code, our customers can now access a plethora of health services. Also, stakeholders within the healthcare ecosystem can extend their services across the country, in an affordable and efficient manner. This is indeed a great leap forward,” Saint-Nwafor said.