Nigeria is made up of six regions namely, South-East, South-South, South-West, Northeast, North- West and North-Central. These regions are peculiar with respect to their developmental needs and infrastructural challenges.

The South East is one of the regions of the Nigerian State with peculiar infrastructural developmental needs as it pertains to health care services.

This explains why we must be very deliberate about exploiting the gains of health insurance in the region to make sure that a larger portion of the population can access a relatively better quality of care at a relatively affordable cost.

Health insurance option is aimed at having the citizens make monthly contributions towards their healthcare services which they would need in the future.

The health insurance option must be explored by the leaders of the Southeastern region at all levels to ensure that in these dire difficult economic times, that patients reduce the rate at which they pay for their healthcare needs from out of pocket.

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It is worthy to note that there is a law that stipulates that any resident of Nigeria must be covered by a form of health insurance policy.

This same law makes it compulsory too for any employer of labour with more than five (5) staff to compulsorily have these employees covered by a health insurance policy which they expect these employers to make the deductions of the monthly premium from the salary of their staff.

The Southeast is made up of the following states namely, Abia, Imo, Enugu, Anambra and Ebonyi States. Of these five states of the Southeast, we can boldly say that only a state is leading in terms of offering government owned health insurance services to its citizens and that state is – Anambra State.

Anambra State Health Insurance Agency (ASHIA) is the insurance wing of the state government, and they have verifiably been able to offer ndi Anambra residents quality health insurance services which has also reflected in the number of patients who renew their various premium at the end of their service subscription year.

We must also let you our dear readers understand that health insurance in Nigeria is provided by the government and the private sector. The private sector health insurance outfits are largely owned by banks. They are called health maintenance organizations.

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To be eligible to be a recipient of the health insurances services, you are expected to contribute a fraction monthly so that incase you become sick such that you would need professional medical care, the expenditure you would have to make out of your pocket would be the most minimal.

Abia, Enugu, Imo, Ebonyi states respectively must sit up and work out modalities of how to atleast start off their health insurance service journey without forgetting to make sure that they open up digital platform channels with which they can get real time feedbacks on the quality of services being rendered to them when they go to seek care at the accredited health institutions.

Every sane leader understands that we cannot afford not to make the best of use of the privilege of pulling these funds from citizens for health insurance.

The only thing they owe these citizens is to have a good arrangement with the service rendering institutions to make sure that they offer the best of care to these patients and to ensure that service providers get their claims paid as at when due.

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As we wrap up this article, I would want to make this practical illustration to make the lay person on the street understand how helpful having a health insurance coverage can be for a not so wealthy resident.

A particular trader in Onitsha just started a new family. He is a man of faith and one of those who have the weird belief that having a child through caesarean session is not the will of God.

His bias for caesarean session notwithstanding, he thought it wise to register his family with Anambra State health insurance agency where he didn’t spend more than thirty-five-thousand-naira (35,000) to subscribe for his annual (one year) health insurance package.

Due to some conditions beyond anyone’s control, at the time of labor, the medical team decided that this patient was going to have a caesarean session because of the position of the baby, if she was to deliver her baby safely.

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The consent of the husband was sought but he was reluctant because of the amount of money involved for the procedure.

Respite came his way when he heard that Anambra State health insurance agency was going to pay the bulk of the bill being that he is seeking this care from an ASHIA accredited facility.

The bill summed up to four hundred and fifty thousand naira (450,000) at the end of her admission, but this patient only paid sixty thousand naira only while ASHIA had to offset the three hundred and ninety thousand naira (390,000) left of the bill.

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Having a health insurance firm owned by the state government that is efficiently and professionally managed would assist the citizens access timely and quality care at relatively affordable cost while making it possible for government to provide funding through low interest loans, grants to support these medical institutions to acquire state of the art medical equipment with which they can carry out advanced medical procedures in the South east.

The governors of the South eastern states must take a cue from Anambra state government while we call on Anambra state health insurance agency to work towards improving the quality of their services to meet international best practises. Until we have a south eastern region where health care services are of the best quality in the state, there should be no rest for us the citizens.

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