From Gyang Bere, Jos
The Director General of Plateau State Contributory Healthcare Management Agency, (PLASCHEMA), Dr Fabong Jemchang Yildam, said the media play a pivotal role in the realization of universal health care coverage in Nigeria.
He noted that the media weld enormous power that set the health agenda for Nigerians towards achieving universal health coverage.
Yildam disclosed this on Thursday during an interface with the Media on the theme”Leveraging on the Media for sustainable Universal health coverage” held at the Crest hotel Jos, Plateau State.
He lamented that poverty magnifies the need for health care while shrinking the capacity to finance it and said the agency has taken a deliberate step using the media to overcome such challenges.
“The media is at the heart of achieving Universal health coverage and the media hold stakeholders in the health sector accountable for their action and inaction by way of constructive criticism for a desirable result,” he stated.
“Also the media drive agenda and most importantly it serves as an advocate for policy formulation between the formulators and the stakeholders in the health insurance sector and it is practically impossible to achieve universal health coverage without the media.”
Yildam lamented how the out-of-pocket expenditure in obtaining health care services has impoverished indigent persons in the rural communities and called on their representatives both in the state and at the National level to purchase premiums for the rural villagers to uplift them from poverty.
“Out-of-pocket expenditure means that people will dip their hands in their pockets to pay for medical services and based on the baseline survey that we did shows that about 76.7 per cent of people in Plateau pay for health services out of pocket and that has been described as catastrophe out-of-budget expenditure.
“This creates hardship and further deepens people into poverty when they access health care and those 96.7 per cent and out of this, we have a whopping 74 per cent who are daily income earners.
“The daily income earners are farmers, market women, traders among others and accessing health care becomes difficult and the baseline survey also pointed that we have poor health-seeking behaviours,” he stated.
The Director General also presented identify cards to 50 journalists for enrollment into the Plateau State Contributory Healthcare Management Agency and said the benefiting journalists can access health care from October.
Chairman of Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ), Plateau State, Paul Jatau, applauded PLASCHEMA for the good gesture and said journalists will now become ambassadors of the agencies.
He emphasized on the need for journalists to always go for medical check-ups to ensure sound health to serve God and humanity.