Nationwide registration of LEAP beneficiaries with NHIS begins today
A nationwide exercise to register beneficiaries of the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) programme with the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) is to begin from Today, July 18 to December 21, 2016.
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The registration, which is a collaboration between the LEAP programme and the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA), will be carried out in 185 LEAP districts for an expected 281,656 LEAP beneficiary households.
According to a statement from the LEAP secretariat, the nationwide NHIS registration for LEAP beneficiaries was a follow-up to a successful pilot registration exercise that was undertaken in March 2016 in the Shai Osudoku and Ada West districts of the Greater Accra Region.
During the pilot excercise, a total of 856 beneficiaries were registered with the NHIS while others had their cards renewed, it stated.
Registration exercise
The statement said the registration exercise was targeted at all LEAP beneficiary household members who do not have NHIS cards or whose NHIS registration cards would expire within three months from the date this exercise was initiated in a district.
The objective of the NHIS registration, it said,was to increase access to healthcare services among LEAP beneficiaries.
The LEAP Programme is both a conditional and unconditional cash transfer programme being implemented by the LEAP Programme Secretariat under the Ministry of Gender Children and Social Protection (MoGCSP).
Programme objectives
The statement indicated that the objective of the programme was to reduce poverty by increasing consumption and promoting access to services and opportunities among extreme poor and vulnerable households.
“ For an extremely poor household to qualify for LEAP, it must have at least one member who is an orphan or a vulnerable child or an elderly person aged 65 and above without any support or a severely challenged person without any productive capacity and or a pregnant woman or a child under two years,” it said.
It further said the exercise would enable LEAP beneficiaries to access free healthcare which was expected to lead to a considerable reduction in healthcare expenditure for LEAP households to enable them use the cash grant on other productive activities.