The Director in charge of Social Protection at the Gender Ministry, Mr Richard Akutteh Adjetey (right), interacting with a beneficiary during the registration exercise.

Ministry registers June 3 flood victims with NHIS

Zainabu Issah Health May - 13 - 2016 , 10:05

The Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection under its Emergency Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) programme has started registering victims of the June 3, 2015 flood and fire disasters with the National Health Insurance Scheme, free of charge in the Ashaiman Municipality.

The registration, which is being done in collaboration with the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA), comes in the wake of the victims losing their NHIA cards during the floods, which has made it difficult for them to access healthcare.

Currently, about 624 persons from five communities in the municipality have lost their cards. The communities are Roman Down, 121; Newtown, 112; Middle East, 131; Community 22, 170; and Lebanon Dam Site, 90.

Emergency LEAP

The Emergency LEAP intervention was announced in June 2015 by the ministry as a step by the government to support victims of the June 3 disaster to help them cope with the temporary hardship they were facing.

The categories of beneficiaries include households which lost breadwinners in the flood or fire, as well as those who lost their businesses and belongings.

The ministry since then has enrolled 11,152 households on the emergency LEAP programme to satisfy the immediate needs of the affected households, and subsequently some residents of Osu Doku, Osu Alata and Odawna who lost their NHIS cards were registered with the scheme.

Improve welfare

At the registration exercise at Ashaiman, the Director in Charge of Social Protection at the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection, Mr Richard Akutteh Adjetey, said most of the affected persons found it difficult to access health care after the disaster because they had lost their insurance cards.

Therefore, he said, the exercise was a measure to help improve the living conditions of the affected persons and to also facilitate their access to health care. He expressed the ministry’s commitment to the welfare of the people.