BASHCMA: Political Office Holders Must Contribute 5% of Salary To Health Insurance

Following the approval by the Bauchi State Governor, Sen Bala Mohammed on the implementation of the State health Contributory scheme, the Bauchi State Health Contributory Management Agency (BASHCMA) has said that it has commenced the implementation of the formal sector of the programme.

As a starting point, all the 31 Legislators in the state, political office holders as well as Senior Civil Servants are to contribute 5% of their salaries to the scheme while other Civil Servants from both the State and Local Government Councils would contribute 2 per cent.

The Executive Secretary of BASHCMA, Dr Mansur Dada stated this during a one day training for Journalists on State Health Contributory Scheme, organized by BASHCMA in collaboration with a USAID Integrated Health Program (IHP) and a Civil Society Organization (CSO), Journalists for Public Health and Development Initiative (J4PD).

According to the Executive Secretary, BASHCMA is the state social health insurance agency running the federal government Basic Minimum package of healthcare services of the Basic Healthcare Provision Fund (BHCPF).

He added that the state has already implemented the vulnerable programme where 53,800 beneficiaries are currently accessing healthcare services at the 323 primary healthcare facilities and 26 general hospitals across the state.

Read Also: NBA Members Encouraged to Embrace Health Insurance Scheme

Mansur Dada also said that the objective of the health agency includes the continuous improvement of quality health care services, provide easy financial access to health care services, reduce out of pocket spendings, improve the socio-economic status of the citizens and improve private health sector participation.

According to him, “The informal sector programme targets those that are neither vulnerable or working in organized setting and it accounts for more than 75 percent of the population, It can be individual or family plan” .

The BASHCMA ES also stated that some of the challenges of the social health insurance programme in the state include low turnout of registered clients at the PHCs, lack of judicious utilization of disbursed funds by health facilities, quality gaps especially of Human Resource for health and untimely submission of data for onward submission.

In her remarks, Coordinator of J4PD, Ms Elizabeth Nange Kah stressed that, “For quite a while now Bauchi State has been consistent in allocating 15 percent inline with Abuja declaration and it is quite commendable”.

She added that, “But our concern as CSO is that at the end of the year, the health budget performance leaves much to be desired and this is due to inadequate releases of funds appropriated”.