Wa,– The National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) has added four childhood cancers to the NHIS benefit package as part of efforts to mitigate the financial burden of children with cancer.
These include Leukemia (childhood cancer of the blood), Wilms’ Tumor or Nephroblastoma (Childhood cancer of the Kidney), Retinoblastoma (childhood cancer of the eye) and Neuroblastoma (Childhood cancer of the jaw).
Mr Samuel Lobber, the Upper West Regional Director of the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA), disclosed this during the 2021 NHIS Week Celebration in Wa on the theme: “NHIS: Using the Ghana Card for Expanding Access to Health Care.”
According to him, these were the commonest childhood cancers identified in their part of the world with a high chance of survival (80%) when diagnosed early and treated.
He explained that the weeklong programme was to celebrate their progress in ensuring financial access to healthcare, celebrate their stakeholders, especially cherished members and celebrate their distinguished partners like Healthcare Providers, and the media as well as the general public.
Mr Lobber noted that the theme was in line with the government digitization agenda of linking all national Identity Cards with the Ghana card as well as the NHIA determination of expanding access to all.
“As known of the NHIA, we took the lead in leveraging on technology and innovation to link the NHIS cards with the Ghana card on *929# to expand access to health care,” he said.
This according to him came with enormous benefits, including easy linkage/renewal, synchronization of data from the National Identification Authority (NIA) and the NHIS for a much cleaner database, easing of traffic at the various district offices and introduction of efficiency into the public sector.
The Regional Director of the NHIA pointed out that during the period of celebration, people who registered or renewed their defaulted cards would not wait for one month before accessing health care.
Mr Lobber, therefore, urged members to take advantage of the opportunity to renew their expired cards and benefit from having an instant active card, adding that new members should also take advantage to register and benefit from the package.
He appealed to the media to give the weeklong celebration the needed publicity to enable them to reach out to the entire region’s population and beyond.
Activities marking the weeklong NHIS Week Celebration include awareness creation through floats and road shows at the regional and district levels, promoting the use of Ghana Card to access health care through community registrations and thanksgiving service with on-site registration.
Source: Ghana News Agency
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