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Oyo State Health Insurance Agency (OYSHIA) has disclosed that it has registered five tertiary institutions into the state health insurance scheme.
The Executive Secretary of the agency, Dr Sola Akande, stated this while speaking on a radio programme.
According to Akande, the tertiary institutions include Ladoke Akintola University of Technology (LAUTECH), Ogbomoso; Oke Ogun Polytechnic; College of Education, Lanlante; College of Agriculture, Igbora; Adeseun Ogundoyin Polytechnic, Eruwa; and Emmanuel Alayande College of Education, Oyo.
He said: “We have just signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Polytechnic Oke Ogun to enroll their students on the scheme and for LAUTECH, we created a URL for them so that they will do the registration by themselves, which is ongoing as we speak. We were in touch with the Director of Medical Services lately and we realise that students have started and they are carrying out the enrollment into the scheme.
“We are also bringing in private institutions on board this November and some private establishment too because a number of eateries and supermarkets are already on the scheme and some private secondary schools.”
The Executive Secretary also said that the next phase OYSHIA is going into is the sustenance of Primary Healthcare Centers (PHC).
“The essence of the community-based insurance is to ensure that the community will take ownership of PHCs so that the maintenance of these PHCs will not be on the government alone.
“OYSHIA’s responsibility is to lift PHCs up to standard and the community comes in by making sure that the standard is sustained. What we are doing in regards to that is that each community must enroll 2500 people in their community, they will not pay N8,000, which is the standard but they will pay half because their scheme has been subsidised by 50%.
“The day to day running of that PHC in the locality will be run by those in charge of the PHCs and the community leaders, so they own, run and monitor the PHC,” he said.