An estimated 756,000 Lagos residents have so far been registered for health insurance by the Lagos State Health Management Agency, LASHMA, the agency has revealed.
This was disclosed at the agency’s first annual Ilera Eko forum themed: “The Brighter Future”. The forum was organised as an interaction between LASHMA and the health insurance providers in the state.
The General Manager of LASHMA, Dr Emmanuella Zamba said the agency is seeking innovative ways to support providers in ensuring that their services are upgraded without worries over inflation.
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Zamba said, “The beauty of health insurance is that it takes human side financing, which is people’s money to provide healthcare. What that means is that every month, a fixed amount goes into the facility from every person that is enrolled.
“The hospital has a guaranteed income which they can use to not only provide care but to also increase the quality of their facilities,” she said.
“We partner with a combination of both public and private facilities in Lagos State. Whatever we are doing on the public side, we are also doing to support the private side. Those are things that we are looking at with regard to providers’ management.”
She explained that providers will now have the opportunity to enroll people into their facilities.
“We can support them to have sensitisation exercises in their localities, so we help them to increase the number of people who come their way because that increases the funding that is coming to them,” Zamba stated.
Speaking on the scheme, Lagos State Commissioner for Health, Professor Akin Abayomi, represented by the Permanent Secretary, Health, Dr Olusegun Ogboye, said, “The plan is not only for the vulnerable, it is for anybody that is willing to pay for it. Infact, it is now compulsory to get health insurance but for the vulnerables, we don’t want to leave them behind. It will be terrible to leave people just because they can’t afford it.”
