The National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) said on Friday it had concluded all arrangements to provide healthcare cover for National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) member in Osun.
Mr Hamed Yahaya, the Director of NHIS, Osun Office, made this known during the NHIS enrollment sensitisation lecture organised for corps members serving in Osun, at the Osogbo Township Stadium.
Yahaya explained that the NHIS started operation in 2005 and the scheme was providing different healthcare programmes/services for Nigerians in different sectors of the economy.
He said that the scheme would now be providing medical/health cover for active corps members serving across the country.
He said that the corps members in Osun were lucky to be part of the first set of beneficiaries of the NHIS-NYSC corps members healthcare cover tagged GIFSHIP.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the GIFSHIP stands for Group, Individual, Family, and Social Health Insurance Programme.
Yahaya said that NHIS started the health insurance enrollment sensitisation for corps members in Osun on Wednesday.
He added that three NYSC zones in Osun were covered and that the Friday’s sensitisation was for the Osogbo zone, being the last zone.
Mrs Sekinat Yusuf, a moderator from NHIS, also explained further that the GIFSHIP was to ensure every mobilised and serving corps member had access to good healthcare service.
She said following unfortunate reports in 2016 about the death of some corps members due to health related issues, President Muhammadu Buhari directed the inclusion of corps members under NHIS coverage.
She said the scheme, after series of meetings and based on the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) reached with the NYSC on Sept. 7, 2021, redesigned its GIFSHIP to cover NYSC serving corps members.
She said the GIFSHIP would ensure that serving corps members had adequate and quality healthcare services and were protected from financial risks from medical expenses.
Yusuf highlighted the process and procedure the corps members would follow to get registered for the health insurance programme.
He said that once they were registered, they would no longer pay for medical treatment received from their chosen health care providers/hospitals.
She, however, added that the GIFSHIP only covered the corps members while still serving and that the coverage would end three weeks after their service year.
She added that whosoever wanted to continue using his/her insurance package thereafter would then pay for it.
Earlier, the NYSC South West Office, representative, Mr Oluwole Amusan, congratulated the corps members in Osun for being part of the first set of beneficiaries of the NHIS insurance scheme.
Amusan said although the NYSC had several welfare packages for their corps members, the present batches of corps members were lucky to be the first set of enrollees for the NHIS-NYSC healthcare package.
He, therefore, urged the corps members to make the best use of the opportunity presented to them and pay attention to the sensitisation lecture so as to know how to key into the health insurance programme.