Executive Secretary of Bayelsa Health Insurance Scheme, Dr. Zuoboemi Agadah says high inflation rates and soaring cost of drugs are some of the biggest challenges to achieving universal health coverage in the State and the country.
He stated this in Yenagoa at the Correspondents’ Forum, a Media interactive platform of the Federated Correspondents’ Chapel (FCC) of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) Bayelsa State Council.
The BHIS helmsman advocated government regulation of pharmaceutical companies in order to control the high cost of drugs to enable beneficiaries enjoy health care services from Health Insurance Schemes.
The restructured Bayelsa Health Insurance Scheme which was reorganized commenced operations fully in 2017 under the administration of former governor Seriake Dickson who now represents Bayelsa West Senatorial District to give adequate health insurance cover to all civil servants in the state and was later extended to both informal sectors across the state.
Executive Secretary of the BHIS Dr. Zuoboemi Agadah, said from its inception the scheme now has over two hundred thousand enrollees out which over one hundred thousand are civil servants while the rest come from the informal sector.
According to him, the BHIS has a total of 203 accredited health institutions comprising 97 hospitals and 106 primary health centers across the 105 wards in the state with civil servants paying 2 percent from their salary while those in informal sectors pay two thousand naira a month, amounting to twenty four thousand naira a year.
However, Dr. Agadah says the major factors militating against the efficient and effective operation of the Bayelsa Health Insurance Scheme were the high rate of inflation in the country and skyrocketing costs of drugs, stressing the need for regulation of pharmaceutical companies and technology to achieve Universal Health Coverage especially to the less privileged and people in rural communities.
“While the inflation is high the deductions still remain. How do we cope with what we were deducting since 2017 to 2024 The issues of inflation, pharmaceutical companies, technologies and others are posing serious Challenges, but we are still rendering the same quality services”, Dr. Agadah stated.
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“While we face inflation and high cost of drugs and others, we cannot tell the people that are contributing to contribute more. As the inflation is high the hospitals are also telling us that what we are paying them was no longer obtainable.
When we designed this program in 2017 Augmentin, the Anti Malaria Drug was less than one thousand naira but as of 2024 it is about N25, 000 while some are even sold it for N30,000, though it has now come down to N15,000. No government can manage this type of thing’ he said.
To address the challenge, Dr. Agadah noted that the Management of the Bayelsa Health Insurance Scheme was planning to establish a Central Drugs Distribution system and a drugs management organization in order to get drugs directly from major distribution centers or from manufacturers to make the drugs cheaper for the beneficiaries and which vendors to hold responsible in cases of poor standard of medications.
