The Minister of Health, Osagie Ehanire, on behalf of the Federal Government (FG) launched the Group Individual and Family Social Health Insurance Programme (GIFSHIP) on Thursday in Abuja. This health insurance scheme are accessible to Nigerians who are not insured by their employers.
Ehanire said the new programme will be added to packages being run by the Nigerian Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) and assured that the GIFSHIP will reshape healthcare financing in Nigeria.
He talked of it as the ministry’s “omnibus enrolment platform within the National Health Insurance Scheme to backup health care cover for Nigerians, most importantly those that are not currently under any form of health insurance by their employers.
GIFSHIP is designed to give specific and easy coverage to Nigerians not targeted in other insurance packages.
“A major objective of GIFSHIP is to rapidly expand the scope of healthcare coverage in our urgent quest to attain Universal Health Coverage (UHC), for which we cannot afford to leave anyone behind.”
“This programme will enable individuals, families and groups to join the NHIS ecosystem. Some of the appealing features of this programme are: the inbuilt mechanisms to guard against moral hazard, adverse selection as well as allowing room for organizations, political office holders, donor agencies, multinational corporations, philanthropists and people in diaspora to contribute their quota towards the attainment of UHC.”