The Kebbi State Government says it is fully committed to fulfilling it own part of the obligations made with the newly established Contributory Healthcare Management Agency (KECHEMA) to ease cost of health services face by the vulnerable citizens of the state.
Gov. Atiku Bagudu stated this during the inauguration and flag-off of the formal sector enrolment exercise into the scheme in Birnin Kebbi on Tuesday.
He assured the agency, staff and stakeholders that government would not fail in implementing all the commitments made toward the success of the scheme.
“I want to commend the management and staff of this agency for working hard, tirelessly to ensure success of the scheme in the state and its general acceptability” he said.
“The high cost of health service led to the inaccessibility of the service by the low income earners” he added .
“Only the contributory health scheme can help us and make health service equitable to help each other.
“Assisting each other is one of the fundamental of faith of our religion, therefore, the high and top officers should try to subsidy health insurance scheme so that the lower income earners can benefits from it,” he said.
He noted that involving the formal sector into the scheme would bridge the gap between the poor and the rich when citizens could access health services at affordable rates and levels.
The governor, represented by the Secretary to the State Government, Alhaji Babale Umar-Yauri, assured that the government would meet up with its obligations so that the larger number of people would benefit from the scheme.
Earlier, the Commissioner for Health, Alhaji Jafar Muhammad, commended the state government for implementing the scheme in the state.
He stressed that the action of the present administration had started yielding good results as low income earners were accessing health services easily across the state.
In his remarks, the Executive Secretary and Chief Executive Officer of KECHEMA, Dr. Jafar Augie-Muhammad, said that the agency targeted over 534,000 people after inauguration of informal and formal sectors with about 89,000 principals.
“About 89,000 principals so far; before, it was 87,000 before the enrolment of principals.
“Under the state government, we have 21,337 civil servants from Universal Basic Education, and 21 Local Government Areas, we have 22,000 above and 23,000 above civil servants.
“If you add them up, we are having 89,000 civil servants that are principals. When you multiply the figure by six, you will see that KECHEMA will be having over 534,000,” he said.
In this remark,the Acting Head of Service, Alhaji Safiyanu Garba-Bena, said that the benefit of the scheme to the civil servants were so enormous ranging from quality health services delivery to accessible healthcare across the state.
He stressed that the scheme would put an end to high blood pressure common among the civil servants since they would be going for regular medical checkup.
Speaking on behalf of the traditional rulers, Alhaji Ibrahim Bashar, commended the state government and KECHEMA for introducing the scheme in the state. (NAN).
