Bola Tinubu, the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress, has set a target to cover a minimum of 87 million or 40 percent of Nigerians within two years deploying the mandatory national health insurance scheme.
He plans to achieve this expansion by increasing the financing available for the Basic Health Care Provision Fund and the Vulnerable Group Fund that was recently established by President Muhammadu Buhari to insure the health of vulnerable Nigerians.
At the moment, Nigeria’s insurance structure, both publicly and privately led, covers less than 10 million Nigerians.
Tinubu, who has made the bold declaration to remove fuel subsidy, aims to use funds saved as additional financial source for insuring the vulnerable, specifically pregnant women and children under five.
He has however considered the decentralisation of the social health insurance scheme, against the fresh mandate of the current administration to bring all Nigerians under a central national scheme managed by the National Health Insurance Authority.
Femi Olugbile, health analyst and former permanent secretary, Lagos Ministry of Health, said the goal to extend coverage to 40 percent of the population is achievable since the National Health Insurance Act already made insurance mandatory.
He said with political will, intelligent advocacy, and working more with informal sector groups, more than the target can be achieved, adding that the implementation of strategies remains a bone of contention.
“We believe that Nigeria’s health insurance scheme should be decentralised to meet the growing need of the nation and to see that there is more funding for the health sector of Nigeria,” Sonia Odije-Fajusigbe, economic policy adviser at the Consulate General of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Lagos, said recently at a dialogue on pro-health taxation.
A breakdown of Tinubu’s agenda shows his major healthcare policies are hinged on governance and leadership, equity and quality, preventive care, financing and national insurance, workers welfare and job creation, public health emergency, and mental health and drug abuse.
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His delivery of equity will focus on the poor and marginalised and will implement policies to ensure that all services in federal government hospitals are of high-quality and people centred.
Tinubu has promised to deploy adequate infrastructure and human resources to address maternal and childcare, immunisation, and manage preventable diseases.
“The most effective avenue to achieving this is to strengthen our national primary healthcare network. Through the use of incentive schemes and counterpart funding programmes, we will work with state governments to build a network of static and mobile clinics to ensure that nobody lives more than 3km or 30 minutes away from the primary care facility,” he said.
On worker’s welfare, the APC candidate has promised to hire more workers and enhance their skill set, especially in primary healthcare facilities.
He plans to use incentives including performance-based salary increases, family health insurance cover, mortgage ownership plans and tertiary education scholarships to curb the incessant brain drain crisis challenging the health sector.
On research and development, he would work with the private sector to fund local research and development of new drugs, vaccines and diseases, if elected.
He plans to back the allocation of one percent of pooled health insurance funds to health research, through research grants and support for institutions involved in health research.
In terms of mental health, “a Tinubu government will place great emphasis on mental health promotion and orientation programs for populations at risk to reduce the incidence of abuse and illness,” he said.
“We shall also train primary healthcare workers on the early detection and treatment of mental illness and drug abuse to reduce the number of people who suffer alone while their illnesses go undetected and untreated.”
