Abakaliki: The Ebonyi State Health Insurance Agency (EBSHIA) has unveiled the ‘Adopt Your Community Initiative’ to extend quality healthcare access to all citizens of the state. The Executive Secretary, EBSHIA, Dr. Divine Igwe, announced this on Tuesday in Abakaliki while briefing newsmen. He stated that the initiative would greatly benefit citizens, especially those in rural areas.
According to Voice of Nigeria, the initiative aims to build a strong safety net that guarantees essential healthcare services without imposing financial hardship on beneficiaries. Dr. Igwe emphasized that this initiative fosters a culture of collective responsibility and solidarity, representing a significant step towards achieving universal health coverage in the state. The initiative calls on political leaders, business owners, philanthropists, and community leaders to actively support the health wellbeing of their communities by adopting a village or community and funding their health insurance premiums to broaden healthcare a
ccess.
Dr. Igwe explained that the initiative was considered due to the escalating cost of medical care, which has forced many vulnerable citizens to seek care from unqualified practitioners. This situation leads to higher morbidity and mortality rates, underscoring the urgent need for scalable efforts to close the coverage gap. He highlighted that nearly 87,000 individuals have been enrolled into health insurance programs by the state government in 2024, yet a large portion of the population remains uninsured.
The cost of health insurance per person is set at N15,000 annually, offering a comprehensive approach to beneficiaries’ healthcare. The initiative aims to mitigate catastrophic medical expenditures, with examples such as using N3 million to discharge 20 patients from hospitals, which could instead enroll 200 beneficiaries. This drastically reduces financial risks for families and encourages timely healthcare-seeking behavior. Additionally, the initiative builds political goodwill as leaders who champ
ion their constituents’ health through this initiative foster trust and goodwill.
Dr. Igwe expressed gratitude to Governor Francis Nwifuru and his wife for their invaluable support to the program and their general interventions in the state’s health sector. He noted that the governor has played a monumental role in revitalizing the state’s health sector by employing health workers, adequately motivating them, procuring equipment and medical consumables worth billions of naira, including ambulances for general hospitals, and inaugurating drugs and medical commodities management agencies while approving free health insurance for workers, among other efforts.