Katsina targets 700,000 people for its health insurance scheme – Punch Newspapers

Published 2 February 2022

The Katsina State Government has said its target in 2022 is to increase the number of people who enrol in its contributory healthcare scheme to 700,000.

The state currently has 341,675 people who have enrolled in the scheme and are made up of 288,675 government workers and 53,000 individuals.

The Director-General, Katsina State Contributory Healthcare Management Agency, Mr Muhammed Safana, made the disclosure in Katsina while appraising the performance of the Agency since it commenced operation six months ago.

He revealed that the Agency, would, among others, enrol students in all higher institutions in the state and engage in sensitisation of residents of the state, especially those living in rural areas to meet the target.

According to him, the agency will also encourage individuals to enrol in the scheme via affordable monthly contributions.

Safana said, “We have our work plan to enrol more people for the scheme this year. Our target is 700,000 people before the end of the year and we have begun work on that already. Since the scheme is open to those who are eighteen above, it is our plan to enrol students in our higher institutions for the scheme since it is presumed that students in higher institutions should be eighteen and above.

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“We are also going to embark on community-based enrolment and constituency-based enrolment whereby lawmakers could register residents in their various constituencies to ensure that they enjoy medical facilities in all the participating hospitals in the scheme.”

The KTSCHMA boss said the state government had made available the one percent of the Consolidated fund revenue in the 2022 budget as the take-off grant for the agency,” adding that the Agency would start accessing the fund from this January.

He said, “With the level of our performance within the shortest time that we began operation, we have been able to register the 288,675 enrollees from the formal sector and the 53,000 from the informal sector. Our target, as I said, is to reach 700,000 before the end of 2022 and we are not relenting to meet the target.”