OSHIA to Enroll All Pregnant Women in Osun

Yinka Kolawole in Osogbo

The Osun State Health Insurance Agency (OSHIA) has expressed its intention to enroll all the pregnant women in the state so that they could have access to good and affordable healthcare services in the state

The agency also hinted that it would soon start training of interpreters who would be acting as middlemen for the people living with disability, especially the deaf and dumps.

The Executive Secretary of the agency, Dr. Rasaq Akindele, dropped the hints yesterday while featuring on the news and current affairs programme tagged: NewsPoints, and organised by the members of Osun NUJ Correspondents’ Chapel, Osogbo.

According to him, “We have intentions of registering all the pregnant women in the state into the scheme because pregnancy requires adequate attention, we want to ensure that after nine months everybody should be happy after pregnancy. We have put it forward to the governor and we are waiting for the approval to get all pregnant women enrolled to get free treatment.”

He further explained: “We will train nurses  and other health workers that are in various government hospitals on how to interpret signs so that at a particular time that any deaf or dumb pregnant woman comes to the hospital somebody would be  there to interpret the signs to the doctors and the nurses on duty to get adequate health.”

Speaking on the achievements of the agency, since he took over the mantle of power, Akindele said no fewer than 23,000 retirees have been enrolled into the Osun Health insurance Agency of the State Government

He said it was part of the state government effort to ensure that retired civil servants received their  health benefits after their  mandatory service years, adding that  more people will be enrolled into the program

He said OSHIA being an agency saddled with the responsibility of ensuring ,provision of health insurance scheme to the citizens of the state hinted that there is continuous enrollment for those who are retiring from service on daily basis.

While  saying that many people have benefited from the agency since Governor Ademola Adeleke took over the leadership of the state, he disclosed that enrollment of pensioners have been digitalised and as such had made it easier for them to  have access to health facilities  for their health issues.

According to Akindele, who lamented the rate of ignorance of people about OSHIA, he said the agency had been carrying out enlightenment programmes for the people to know how to go about their health issues, saying despite all these, many are yet to understand how the agency operates.

He said: “One of the major challenges the agency is having is about education. Many people still believed in analog way of doing registration of the health insurance scheme. We have gone digital and many people were yet to follow the trend of things .This is why we have to partner the media organisations for various enlightenment programme of our agency.”

Akindele, who said the agency would continue aggressive awareness campaign for the people of the state, hinted that many OSHIA staff members have been deployed to all the local government areas of the state for effective mobilisation of pensioners and also to gather accurate statistics of retirees.