Minister of Nigeria’s  Federal Capital Territory, Malam Muhammad Musa Bello has called on the National Health Insurance Scheme NHIS to improve on the quality of services it renders to enrolees of the scheme in FCT hospitals.

The Minister made this call when the Executive Secretary of the Scheme, Professor Usman Yusuf paid him a visit in his office in Abuja.

Malam Bello said the feedback he has been receiving from enrolees of the Scheme in the territory has not been encouraging, especially with regards to the quality of drugs being provided to them.

He decried situations where patients would be asked to purchase drugs from third parties outside of the scheme, despite making part payments to hospital managements, in addition to their contributions to the NHIS.

The minister urged the Scheme to also tackle the perception the public that drugs in the NHIS system are of low quality types.

Reacting to the suggestion that Desk Officers should be assigned to healthcare facilities nationwide to monitor the services being provided to subscribers of the NHIS, the Minister said the FCT Administration would give full support to any idea that could help improve services to the residents.

“The FCT will naturally key into it and provide you the necessary support. The advantage you have is that being stationed in the FCT, you could always use the facilities you have in the FCT to try all the new ideas and interventions you want to do and we will support you so that the FCT will be a model that you will always showcase to other states when you go for advocacy or when you invite them to Abuja,” the Minister stressed.

Malam Bello however, directed the Secretary of the FCT Health and Human Services Secretariat, General Manager of the FCT Hospital Services Management Board as well as the FCT Health Insurance Scheme to sit down with the NHIS team and discuss issues on how to improve the situation.

The Executive Secretary/Chief Executive Officer of the Scheme, Professor Usman Yusuf while acknowledging that the scheme had received complaints about quality of drugs administered to those under the scheme  also said they had received complaint of not being “ treated with the respect and dignity and also omplain to us that drugs are usually out of stock”.

Professor Yusuf therefore solicited the support of the FCT Minister to allow NHIS to deploy Desk Officers in FCT hospitals to advocate for patients.