National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) requires about N646.8 billion annually to provide social health insurance coverage to 70 per cent of Nigeria’s population (about 98 million people) who are poor, vulnerable to high disease burden and reside in the rural areas of the country.

Executive Secretary of NHIS, Dr. Mohammed Dogo, disclosed this at the third anniversary of the scheme in Abuja.

Dogo said like all social security systems in developing countries, the National Health Insurance Scheme at inception faced some daunting challenges ranging from finance to the age old professional rivalry within the healthcare industry.

He, however, said the NHIS was beginning to overcome some of the teething problems with the successful enrolment of 2.5million principals and dependants of employees in the formal sector, the gradual cascading of the programmes to the states as well as the prospects of launching it in the informal sector.

The NHIS, he said, has been identified as a tool for achieving health related Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and has been allotted N4.5billion in the 2008 budget.

Dogo said with the passage of the National Health Bill by both chambers of the National Assembly, there are also prospects that the scheme will benefit from a percentage of the nation’s Consolidated Funds to boost the capacity of the scheme in achieving the Presidential directive of universal coverage by 2015.

The MDG fund will be deployed specifically for the purpose of providing healthcare to pregnant women and children under five in six states of the federation and will be scaled up to include other states in subsequent years. He explained that the National Health Bill has also made provision for the pooling of some funds for the purpose of confronting the challenging disease burden particularly at the primary health care (PHC) level.

He acknowledged that though Nigeria has poor health indices and poorly developed healthcare delivery system resulting from years of neglect and low investment in the sector, NHIS is currently adjudged to be the fastest growing social health insurance scheme in the world.

He disclosed that within the next four weeks, a blueprint developed by the NHIS on strategies of rolling out fully in the informal sector will soon be brought before stakeholders for consideration and adoption.

“The success of any social health insurance scheme the world over is the extent to which it covers the informal sector. This is so in developing countries like Nigeria that have very high poverty index with significant percentage of their population being vulnerable to contracting diseases. Cognisance of the fact that the mandate given to the scheme for universal cover for all Nigerians by 2015 cannot be met without flagging off or rolling out in the rural communities, the NHIS developed a blueprint for the engagement of this population group.

The framework was guided by the scheme’s previous experience in community based health insurance and best practices in other parts of the world through study visits and desk research. The blueprint is currently before the Federal Ministry of Health and will be further tabled to all stakeholders for discussions and adoption,” Dogo said.