The National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) has taken delivery of some consumables and has begun restocking their district offices which ran short of some ID card printing materials.
Some offices of the Scheme in the last few days could not issue new cards to its members because of low stock levels of ribbons at some of their district offices and registration centres.
The NHIA explained that the situation arose because various outreach programs and collaborations with partner institutions such as the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection and the Education Ministry in enrolling pupils on the school feeding program, all prisoners in the country’s prisons among other vulnerable group registration, made the NHIA overshoot its target which led to the low stock levels.
According to Selorm Adonoo, head of communications at the NHIA, “the NHIS as a social protection scheme has a mandate to enroll all identified vulnerable people, and our collaboration with the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection has been very useful in helping us reach out to many of the disadvantaged people in the society.”
On Thursday however, the NHIA took delivery of the consumables and the Authority says the offices which experienced the shortage have been supplied.
Mr Adonoo, mentioned that some of the offices which have received their supplies have started work and the situation will normalize around the country by weekend.
According to Mr Adonoo, the shortage has mainly been a result of the expansion of the Scheme where more people beyond the estimated number have registered in the first part of the year to be part of the scheme.
“It is important to understand that due to the nature of targets we set for ourselves, we started the year with a lot of outreach and field programs that ensured the registration of many people, which is why you hear in the news that regions like Greater Accra and others have exceeded their quarterly targets. The NHIS in this case has become a victim of its own success,” Mr Adonoo told Citi News.
Membership of the NHIS in 2015 stood at 11.2 million and officials of the Scheme have given the indication that they hope to improve upon this number. Last year, people visited the hospital 30 million times on account of the Scheme. The NHIA has a network of about 4,000 healthcare service providers in the country from whom members can access care.
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