June 3 disaster victims registered with NHIS
Over 500 people who were affected by the June 3, 2015 flood and fire disaster in the Osu Alata community in Accra have been registered with the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) free of charge.
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The registration was spearheaded by the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection, in collaboration with the NHIS, and it was to assist the victims to continue to access free medical care.
The three-day exercise, which started last Monday and ended yesterday, November 11, 2015, saw scores of people queuing as early as 8 a.m. to get registered.
Statistics
The June 3 flood and fire disaster left 2,297 people in three communities in Accra homeless, as most of them got their homes flooded, while others got theirs burnt, leaving them with no personal belongings. The breakdown is: 1,250 at Odawna, 472 at Osu Doku and 575 at Osu Alata.
The acting Director of Social Protection at the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection (MoGCSP), Mr Richard Akuetteh Adjetey, made this known at a press briefing in Accra on Wednesday
According to him, the registration had become necessary as most of the individuals affected by the disaster lost their NHIS cards, making it impossible for them to seek free medical care.
The registration, he said, would serve as a stop-gap measure to help improve their living conditions, as well as promote their access to good healthcare.
He said since June, the ministry had enrolled 11,152 households affected by the disaster onto the emergency Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) programme to take care of their immediate needs.
Under the emergency LEAP, each household, comprising members of the same family unit sharing a common income and expenditure, was given GH¢100.