Date: 2018-02-19

The Kwara State Government has embarked on aggressive roll out plans to ensure that more successes are recorded in the Health Insurance Scheme in the state. The Project Coordinator, PharmAccess Foundation in the state, Doctor Bukola Shittu -Muideen who disclosed this in Ilorin , the state capital while responding to questions on a Radio Kwara programme tagged "Health Half Hour" said the scheme would soon be launched in the state .

According to her , since the state House of Assembly had passed the Health Insurance Scheme bill into law , the scheme would be made mandatory for all residents of the state stressing that the benefits are enormous and can not be overemphasized .

Doctor Shittu-Muideen explained that since the scheme had become operational in the state in 2007 when the Senate President , Doctor Bukola Saraki was the state governor, the scheme kicked off in Shonga and eventually covered eleven local government areas but under Governor Abdulfatah Ahmed's administration, the scheme had been scaled up from a community based insurance programme to a state wide health insurance scheme.

She explained that when the scheme effectively takes off , all indigenes of the state would have equitable and qualitative health care services adding that the success of the scheme in the state had given the state an international recognition with the Financial Times award for innovation in Heath care delivery in 2014.

The Project Coordinator said the health insurance scheme also works effortlessly for the beneficiaries and announced that the main vision of the PharmAccess Foundation which has been in operation since 2001, is to ensure that health facilities are available within the Sub-Sahara Africa Continent while presently, the foundation is in partnership with the state government.

According to him, the surest, the easiest and the fasted way to ensure universal health coverage is through insurance and therefore appealed to all residents of the state to key into the programme and register in the scheme immediately it is launched. > Callers on the programme urged the state government to ensure proper implementation of the scheme so as to benefit the entire citizens of the state.