By Martins Ifijeh
AXA Mansard, one of Nigeria´s leading insurance company has reiterated its commitment to the development of community health insurance system in the country.
The Managing Director, Mr. Tope Adeniyi during the inauguration of the Nathaniel Idowu Community Health Centre in Oyo State recently, said the company through its Health Management Organisation would bring technical supports on health insurance by partnering with community health centres and University College of Medicine in Ibadan.
According to Adeniyi, “At AXA Mansard, we support community health insurance system, we have an HMO (AXA Mansard Health) that focuses on building community health to make sure that they have better healthcare at an affordable cost. In order to ensure the sustainability of this initiative, we partner with community health centres, providing them with customised packages and technical support that enables persons requiring health attention from these centres pay little token in accesses health attention.â€
Explaining why they chose to impact on community health by undertaking this initiative, Adeniyi noted that one of the company’s critical objectives, is to develop and empower people to live better lives.
“In throwing our weight behind this initiative, we developed a model that will ultimately help in achieving universal health care for the nation. We do not intend to stop here but to extend this service to all teaching hospitals throughout the nation, making them to partner with community health development centres for sustainable healthcare delivery system across the country,†he said.
In his remarks, the chairman of the occasion and the Chairman Senate Committee on Health, Senator, Lanre Tejuosho, lauded the initiative and said it has been the plan of the federal government to introduce 10,000 primary healthcare centres across the country but this could not be achieved due to lack of funds. “We are very happy that individuals, organisations are taking it upon themselves to fund and establish healthcare centres. Lack of primary health centres made it compulsory for teaching hospitals to take up the services of primary healthcare centres, we are working at the Senate to collaborate with other stakeholders in the health sector to establish more health centres by the end of 2018 so that the centres can take back its roles as primary healthcare centres in the country.â€
The representative of the Minister of Health and Medical Director of the University College Hospital, Ibadan (UCH) Professor Temitope Alonge in his remarks, said that primary health centres serve as the preventive health centres and are needed to be established and more visible because of their closeness to the people in the rural areas. We are helping this centre by making sure that our medical doctors visit the health centre constantly to assist the people in the community.â€
The chief host and the governor of Oyo State, Senator Abiola Ajimobi who was represented by his deputy, Chief Alake Adeyemo, said the project is appropriate in the sense that Oyo State Government is planning to establish and uplift Primary Health Centres. He charged the community to make good use of the centre and make the environment conducive for the smooth operations of the centre. The governor expressed his gratitude to the family of Nathaniel Idowu for their great gestures to the community.
