The Taraba Government has released N100 million as counterpart fund to facilitate the effective take-off of its Contributory Health Insurance Scheme in the state.
The state Commissioner of Health, Dr Innocent Vakkai, disclosed this at the opening of a six-day train-the-trainer workshop in Jalingo preparatory to the take-off of the scheme.
Vakkai said that Gov. Darius Ishaku had directed the state Ministry of Health and the state Primary Health Care Development Agency (TSPHCDA) to ensure that the scheme took off immediately to improve health care delivery across the 16 local government areas of the state.
He explained that the workshop was a capacity building training for health workers across the state and was aimed at equipping them with the technical knowledge on how to implement the scheme with a view to meeting the Universal Health Care (UHC) objective of the World Health Organisation (WHO).
He said the programme which was organised by the state ministry of health in collaboration with (TSPHCDA) and the state Contributory Health Insurance Agency (TSHCIA) would go a long way in actualising the target of the State Government to take healthcare to the door steps of every citizen.
“It will also help us in attaining the standard of accessing the Basic Health Care Provision Fund (BHCPF). The state is committed to the operationalisation of the BHCPF scheme by meeting all conditions necessary for the take-off of the scheme.
“We have set up the state Contributory Health Insurance Agency (TSHCIA) and also complied with the baseline training and the capacity building.
“With this training, Taraba has fulfilled all the prerequisites for the smooth take-off of the programme in the state,” the commissioner said.
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He urged the national facilitators of the programme to be equally determined to ensure that the scheme effectively took off in the state by imparting the necessary knowledge and skills to the participants.
Earlier, the Executive Secretary of TSPHCDA, Alhaji Aminu Hassan, said the training would be replicated at the rural areas, and that the implementation of the BHCPF in the state would go a long way in improving the delivery of health care services to the people, especially those in rural communities.
Meanwhile, the representative of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), Malam Mohammed Sani, has disclosed that the scheme had already credited the account of the Taraba Contributory Health Insurance Agency with the sum of N241 million as the first tranche of the amount earmarked for the programme in the state.
Sani said that with the train-the-trainer programme, the state was now on its last stage to the implementation of the scheme.
