|
Government urged to extend malaria subsidies to private
clinics
Wa, Dec. 31, GNA - The Wa Municipal Mutual Health Insurance
Scheme has noted with concern high claims presented by
private medical facilities in the area for the payment of
malaria treatment and called on the government and donors to
extend the subsidies on malaria to cover these facilities.
Mr John Bosco Zury, the Scheme Manager, said while the
treatment malaria in the public medical facilities was
heavily subsidized those in the private sector charged an
average of 45,000 cedis per malaria patient.
Mr Zury told the GNA in an interview that the cost of
treating the disease in these private health institutions
that did not enjoy the subsidy was draining the financial
resources of the scheme.
He said the cost of medical services in general escalated in
the area as soon as the scheme took off and that such
tendencies needed to be curtailed in order to ensure the
sustainability of the scheme.
Mr Zury said people in the municipality were responding to
the scheme with 9,610 persons joining it in December,
bringing the total figure to 57,133 out of which 35,870 of
them had been issued with their identity cards.
He attributed this positive development to intensified
education campaign through the use of senior secondary
school leavers and testimonies of clients who had already
benefited from the scheme.
The Wa Municipal Scheme had so far settled 1.966 billion
cedis as medical claims of 31,718 clients during the year
and received total premiums of 1.098 billion cedis while
1.687 billion cedis was received from the national
secretariat of the NHIS.
GNA
|
