BY TEWODROS KASSA
Currently, developing countries are striving to ensure access to quality and accessible health services to their citizens. Unquestionably, ensuring social services should be the first priority of a government to its citizens so as to help them lead the country towards sustainable development. Thus, accessible and quality health services prove the socio-economic development of countries.
Unfortunately, in most developing countries, including Ethiopia, such services are not developed at the desired level owing to various reasons; and are still struggling to deliver health services at affordable prices. The Ethiopian government has been exploring various mechanisms to address the aforesaid challenges of the health sector. This includes availing health insurance systems at the door steps of the community.
The government established the Ethiopian Health Insurance Agency as an autonomous federal government organ through Regulation No. 191/2010 with the objective of implementing a health insurance system in the country. The Agency has established 24 branch offices to implement the health insurance system all over the country. The Agency is working focusing on the implementation of two types of health insurance systems in the country. The first type of health insurance system is Community Based Health Insurance (CBHI), which comprises the community engaged in the informal sectors of the economy.
The second type of health insurance system is Social Health Insurance (SHI), which comprises the population engaged in the formal sectors of the economy. SHI has been widely implemented in many European, Asian and African countries for years, and now preparatory activities are being finalized to commence implementation of SHI in Ethiopia too. where individuals or households pay small contributions or prepayments to get health services at the time of illness and to protect them from catastrophic health expenditures. In other words, health insurance is a prepayment system where small contributions are pooled together to insure citizens’ access to health services by avoiding financial barrier.
Recently, it was announced that more than 56 million citizens have benefited from community health insurance services in the past nine months. During the nine months performance evaluation of the service at Hawassa City, Health State Minister Dereje Duguma (MD) said that promising progresses have been registered through providing health insurance service in the country.
As to him, the nine months performance is successful as part of the effective involvement of all sector actors where more than 56 million low income communities in the rural and urban areas benefited. Community-wide health insurance services as a country are encouraging and should be strengthened so as to achieve the national health sector objectives.
The government has given due attention to improve the community health insurance service and make health service delivery effective. Promoting public awareness about the importance of community health insurance service is fundamental to increase the number of health insurance service subscribers in the country. Registering new members of community based health insurance, and issuing ID cards for them, and renewing the cards of existing members was effective following the priority given to the health sector.
He pointed out the need to improving the health service delivery gaps especially; service quality, community pharmacy services, medicines supply, medical treatment machinery supply, information handling system, among others.
On his part, Prime Minister Office Social Justice Administration Division Head Bekele Mengesha said that the government will provide all the necessary support to the success of community based health insurance and improving the health sector services sustainably. “Community based health insurance witnesses the need for cultivating the community’s mutual cohesion and culture of supporting each other. To this end, it is important to undertake extensive activities to improve community based health insurance through successive public consultation,” he said.
Moreover, establishing best experience sharing and service providers encouragement platforms immensely contributes to realize the country’s community based health insurance service effectiveness, he urged. Ethiopian Community Based Health Insurance Director General Frehiwot Abebe on her part said that undertaking fund raising, membership renewal, new members’ registration, identifying the low-income communities, and resolving the sector’s gaps is important to improve community based health insurance coverage and service quality at the national level.
In addition, every stakeholder’s engagement including all state health bureaus’ active participation enables the registration of the current milestone in the community based health insurance service and further public mobilizations activities should be undertaken to widen the service, she noted. The heads and representatives of the health bureaus of all states, representatives of partner
organizations and relevant bodies participated in the discussion to evaluate the nine months performance of the country’s community based health insurance. Meanwhile, the 13th Malaria Scientific Research Network Symposium was held in Hawassa City. The symposium sought to present high level scientifically proven and effective researches and findings that help to eradicate malaria from the country by 2030.
In his opening remark Health State Minister Dereje Duguma (MD) highlighted that malaria is posing a significant challenge on the country’s economy not only with growing mortality rate but also affecting the productive labor force. Therefore, the government has been striving to eradicate malaria within the past ten years and registered promising progress to fully eradicate the case from the country by 2030.
Mentioning that the number of people infected by malaria increasing from time to time due to challenges associated with climate change, he said for instance, in Ethiopia, merely in the last nine months, 8,563,825 million suspected malaria patients have been treated; and following laboratory and rapid test kits tests 2,307,860 people have been diagnosed with malaria. According to Dr. Dereje, studies and research play a major role in the efforts made to eradicate the disease and achieving the goal set to eliminate malaria from our country. Owing to this, the government gives due attention to the findings of studies and researches conducted individually or at group and uses them as input to the sector along with stakeholders.
Currently, multifaceted activities are being done to prevent and control malaria. As part of this effort, during this Ethiopian budget year, 19.7 million malaria nets were bought and imported into the country. Similarly, close to 1.3 million houses were sprayed with anti-malarial chemicals. What is more, awareness raising activities have been carried out through the media, he remarked.
THE ETHIOPIAN HERALD TUESDAY 2 MAY 2023
