The Federal Government has extended the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) to students of tertiary institutions under a new arrangement called the Tertiary Institutions Students Health Insurance Programme.
The new scheme is for both full time and part time students who are expected to register for the service at the cost of N1, 800 and enjoy outpatient care including necessary consumables as provided in the NHIS standard treatment guidelines, referral protocol and other healthcare services.
Also, maternity, ante-natal, delivery and post-natal care for two pregnancies ending in live birth for female students are to be covered by the scheme.
Any baby delivered by a female student is entitled to 12 weeks’ post-natal care, with a maximum of two live births by the female student. Students are also covered during holidays and can access care at any accredited health facility nearest to them, according to the scheme.
Speaking at a one-day sensitisation workshop jointly organised by the National Universities Commission (NUC) and the office of the Special Assistant to the President on Youth and Students Matters, Professor Julius Okojie, Executive Secretary of the commission, also assured 100 per cent implementation of the programme this year.
Represented by his deputy, Professor Chiedu Mafiyana, Okojie said 2/3 of the Nigerian universities have already embraced the programme.
“The university system is a conglomerate of a lot of people and a lot of useful activities. Some of our classes and hostels are overcrowded so what we need is to ensure that we go beyond the ordinary. Now with insurance scheme in place, the commission will ensure that all universities embrace the programme. The universities not yet covered by the programme will soon join,” he assured.
Earlier, Executive Secretary of NHIS, Dr. Femi Thomas, said only 52 million Nigerians are covered by the scheme so far, stressing that it is high time individuals contributed in protecting their lives and those of others.
He said: “By covering students in our tertiary institutions, it means we cover lots of families. If we can have the about 3.9 million students we have in our tertiary institutions nationwide into the programme; you can imagine 3.9 million Nigerians contributing to the NHIS and out of this number maybe only 10 per cent of them will fall sick once in a year so there will be a lot of funds for others to benefit from.”
Dr. Thomas said the objective of the programme is to ensure that every student in the tertiary institutions has access to good health service, ensure availability of funds to tertiary institutions’ health centres for improved services as well as maintaining high standard of health care delivery services within the institutions.
He also said that the NHIS is currently in talks with the management of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) with a view to extending the scheme to corps members during their national assignment, saying the scheme has programme for all ages.
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