NHIA, SFH Sign MoU To Accelerate Universal Health Coverage

Society for Family Health (SFH) Nigeria has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA), towards accelerating Universal Health Coverage (UHC) in the country.

The managing director of SFH, Dr Omokhudu Idogho, while signing the MoU at the NHIA Headquarters, in Abuja, said the MoU is in respect to the provision of technical support and capacity building in areas of innovative financing, benefit packages, strategic plan implementation, and social marketing to improve access to medicines, capacity building, amongst other mutual interest.

He said, “The signing of the MoU takes place in the context of accelerating UHC in Nigeria, with many challenges which continue to pose a significant threat to public health, especially with high out of pocket spending and catastrophic expenditure on health.

“Achieving health for all will require multi-sectoral collaborations from government, private and non-profit organizations.” He added that “we will prioritize universal health coverage with a focus on primary healthcare and strategic purchasing in alignment with the SDG3 action plan.” 

On his part, the director-general of NHIA, Prof Mohammed Nasir Sambo, noted that health insurance was not a free health arrangement, saying it is healthcare that has to be paid for and how much service has to be paid for depends on the willingness and ability to pay.

He said it is therefore very important to have a benefit market that will serve as a benchmark that can be purchased by the NHIA anywhere.

Sambo said the NHIA looks forward to having a very fruitful engagement and collaboration with the SFH, saying the organisation may likely appoint a focal person for transmissibility of the governance of this application.

This, he said, will enable the partnership to begin in a very right direction and have a programme. “We will develop a plan of action on cost with deliverables, benchmarks and indicators so that at the end of the round of the collaboration, we can have a very comprehensive documentation that can serve as a learning tool for us and then document for the inquiry organisations that are collaborating,” he said.

SFH has had 40 years of thought leadership in the health sector and continues to innovate and support the government of Nigeria and policy reforms by strengthening health systems, building the necessary strategic partnership, unification of public and private health services and better use of resources to achieve UHC.

SFH said it is supporting and contributing to NHIA processes including reviews of benefit packages, and integration of FP, HIV and TB services, the development of the operational guidelines for the NHIA Act and designing new approaches and strategies to innovative/strategic financing towards making health insurance work for the people.