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Oyo State Health Insurance Agency (OYSHIA) has revealed that it has started enrolling people via voucher.
The Executive Secretary of the agency, Dr Sola Akande, disclosed this in an interview with Newspeakonline recently.
He said: “Innovation pushed us to have an ICT in place. Now, we enroll through voucher, and that alone makes Oyo State the only state that does that.”
Akande also said setting up the agency was taxing, adding that the major focus was health insurance for every residents of Oyo State.
According to him, there was little or no support for the agency when it started.
“The idea was to enroll residents of the state into community-based health insurance, but it did not work out as planned because there was no law backing it up. The drive was there, but no enabling power to make it work,” he said.
He, however, commended the Oyo State House of Assembly for passing the OYSHIA bill into law.
“After a while, we realised that the state can now give us take-off grant. Now, we used it to either settle our outstanding debts or build on some other things we needed. But we started from ground zero, actually from debts, to where we are today,” Akande said.
He added that the only way healthcare delivery can survive in Nigeria is through health insurance which he described as a viable means of healthcare financing.The OYSHIA boss enjoined all and sundry to embrace health insurance.