- Experts reveal how poor households can escape healthcare expenses
Many patients, especially pregnant women who have visited hospitals for treatments and delivery have turned out to become detainees in the health facilities because of their inability to pay their hospital bills after accessing medical services.
In January this year, a pregnant woman, Mrs Gladys Okodo Omodiagbe, was delivered of quadruplets through Caesarian Section at a private hospital in Effurun, Delta State, but after her safe delivery, she could not afford the N4 million that the hospital charged.
The joy of the new mother, who had suffered 12 years of childbirth delay, was truncated as the hospital management held her hostage in its facility. Her family members had to plead for funds from members of the public before she could raise the bill.
Mrs Omodiagbe’s ordeal is one out of many Nigerians who got stuck in the hospitals where they had visited to seek medical healthcare.
The Point gathered that people who suffer this embarrassment do not subscribe to any Health Insurance Scheme.
Presently in the country, many citizens who fall ill find it difficult to access quality medical care. No thanks to the biting economic hardship confronting the nation and preventing individuals and families from seeking timely and professional healthcare services, particularly the vulnerable, thereby increasing the risk of deaths, especially child and maternal mortality.
At a time where cost of drugs have risen by 300 per cent in Nigeria, poor pregnant women often refer to traditional birth attendants or religious homes for their delivery, putting their lives and those of their unborn babies at risk because of fear of medical bills.
Though this set of women and other medical care seekers are aware of the advantage of patronizing standard hospitals with skilled birth attendants, however, they would rather boycott the same in order to avoid the embarrassment that comes with inadequate funds to foot the bills.
Proffering solutions to this challenge, medical experts have asked Nigerians to adopt health insurance provided by their respective state governments in order to prevent them from the burden of out-out-pockets healthcare expenses.
A Health Specialist with the United Nations Children’s Fund, Dr Ijeoma Agbo, asked Nigerians to subscribe to health insurance as a means of preventing illnesses.
She said if one has the opportunity of regular medical check-up through health insurance, it would prevent ailments and make the family to live more healthier lives and spend less in treatments since illnesses or accident can happen to anyone at any time and the only way to handle such scenario and the attendant financial implication is to have a healthcare coverage.
“In achieving universal health coverage, access to health services must include promoting prevention, treatment, rehabilitation and palliative care. If you remove financial hardship from families, they will be able to afford essential health services within the facilities. So, if a child has access to promotive services such as Vitamin A supplementation, prevention services such as immunization; if they have all these things in place, it will prevent them from coming down with ailment.
“And even in the event that any child comes down with an ailment, families and the parents have the financial backing to pay because they don’t have to bring money from their pocket, it has already been paid for them (through health insurance scheme). It is a pre-payment service. So, that is why we talk about Health Insurance being a gateway to Universal Health Coverage because if this prepayment service is in place, everyone, everywhere, irrespective of your social economic status or your geographic location, you will have access to the service,” Agbo said.
The specialist noted many Nigerians actually spend more seeking healthcare even in substandard facilities, urging them to register for health insurance in their respective states to prevent out-of-pocket spending.
Giving statistics on the nation’s out-of-pocket expenditure from 2019 to 2022, Agbo revealed that, “The Universal Health Coverage service index improved from a global average of 45 out of 100 in 2000 to 64 in 2015 and 67 in 2019. However, almost 1 billion people spent more than 10 per cent of their household budget on out-of-pocket health expenses in 2021, and more than half a billion were pushed into extreme poverty due to these out-of-pocket payments.”
She added, “Nigeria out of pocket expenditure as a share of current health expenditure was at level of 76.2 % in 2022, up from 71.9 % in 2021. According to data from the Nigeria 2021 Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey, the percentage of the population covered by health insurance has been steadily increasing over the years. However, significant gaps still exist, with a substantial portion of the population, especially the vulnerable, remaining uninsured.”
Also speaking on the gains of having an insurance scheme, the Executive Secretary of Oyo State Health Insurance Agency, Dr. Olusola Akande, explained how residents of the state could access quality healthcare with N13, 500 every year.
He said the OYSHIA has renovated eight Primary Health Care Centres and two General Hospitals across Oyo as a way of ensuring that those who enroll in the scheme get maximum medical attention.
Akande noted that having one’s health insured would not only save one from out-of-pocket expenses, but would prevent the patronage of Traditional Birth Attendants and quacks in the state.
