My vision is to bequeath sustainable health insurance scheme to ndi-Anambra – ASHIA boss

Anambra State Health Insurance Agency (ASHIA) has vowed to descend heavily on any of its erring health care providers for breach of service agreement signed with the agency.

     The executive secretary of the agency, Simeon Onyemaechi, made the vow in his office in Awka, during an interview, saying that the agency could  boast of establishing over 250 health insurance facilities in various communities across the state.

         He maintained that the people must work towards getting to a point where they should know what their rights are and enforce them collectively, stressing that in 1948, the UN Charter moved the issue pertaining to health to becoming a fundamental human right so as to protect the people at any time of crisis.

    While calling on ndi Anambra to embrace the ASHIA initiative with a view to cutting out their out-of-pocket-health expenditure, Dr Onyemaechi lamented that the people are dying astronomically from avoidable death today.

    He noted that the agency had not yet got to where it wants to be in terms of providing both formal and informal health care delivery to the people, emphasising that it is targeting to register about one million enrollees in the scheme as against the present 150,000 enrollees in the state.

     The ASHIA boss, who observed  that the crisis with governance in African continent is that the people have powerful individuals, but not powerful institutions, reaffirmed the commitment of the agency to bequeath adequate and quality health services to ndi Anambra which everybody should  be proud of anywhere in the country and the world at large.

        Dr Onyemaechi attributed the success stories recorded already by the agency to the collective efforts of the resilient personnel of the agency, stressing that ASHIA is committed towards achieving the Universal Health Coverage as enshrined in the Sustainable Development Goal three by 2050, through a functional and institutionalised health insurance scheme in the state and advised the affluent in the state to be courageous enough in paying health insurance premiums for the less privileged so that they would be able to benefit from the largesse offered by the scheme.

     He, however, commended Governor Obiano’s political will in setting up the agency and backing it up with the Anambra State Health Insurance Scheme Law 2016, which he said, further entrenched the agency in the fabrics of governance in the state perpetually.