The Management of Subin Sub-metro Mutual Health Insurance Scheme moved a step further at bringing the scheme to the doorsteps of the ordinary Ghanaian when they went to Kajetia-the heart of Kumasi- on Thursday, to launch an educational campaign that enticed hundreds of porters to join the scheme.
This will enable the porters access quality health care at affordable cost.
By the end of the educational campaign which was attended by the Kumasi Metropolitan Chief Executive, Madam Patricia Appiagyei, and the Ashanti Regional Director of the National Health Insurance Authority, Mrs Leticia Osei Poku, as many as 1,500 porters had registered to join the scheme.
It is believed that as many as 25,000 porters, many of them female teenagers, are doing brisk business in Kumasi, but most of them do not belong to the scheme and, therefore, pay the full cost of their medication any time they are ill or seek medical care in the various hospitals within the Kumasi metropolis and its environs.
About four years ago, a head count of porters conducted by the Street Children Foundation- a Kumasi-based non-governmental organisation (NGO), estimated the total number of porters at 19,000 but the number is growing at a fast rate each passing day.
Most of the female porters who are in their teens have given birth to one or more children, making it difficult for them to make ends meet or access quality health care due to their meagre incomes.
Sources at the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital indicate that most of the female porters who were on admission escaped from their hospital beds without paying their bills because they did not belong to the scheme.
This has made the hospital’s authorities to write off huge accumulated bills on regular basis but the management cannot ignore the porters when they seek medical care, especially when they are in labour.
According to the Manager of the Subin Sub-metro Mutual Health Scheme, Ms Esther Odoom, measures are being put in place to register all the 25,000 porters and their dependants to enable them to benefit from the government’s gesture to provide health care services to them when the need arises.
Each of the porters who registered paid the minimum premium of GH¢7.20, but those who proved that they were genuinely poor and could not pay their premium were registered free of charge.
Launching the educational campaign, Ms Odoom said the gesture to move to Kajetia to register the porters was to sensitise them to join the scheme for their own benefit.
She pointed out that more than two-thirds of the porters were located at the catchment area of the Subin Sub-metro Scheme, “but have no permanent abode and no parents to address their needs and concerns. They and their dependants always die of common diseases like malaria and diarrhoea because they find it difficult to access health care due to financial difficulties.”
She said it was to address such concerns that they decided to launch the campaign at Kajetia where most of the porters were engaged in their business.
That, she said, “ was to entice them to appreciate the need to join the scheme to reduce the burden they face in accessing quality health care at affordable cost all the time. This is to create the awareness that they are part of the scheme and also remove any doubt that the health insurance package is for the rich in the society,” she explained.
Ms Odoom urged the porters to patronise the scheme “ because it will give you easy access to better health care and you will also pay the least amount of GH¢7.20, even if you want to do so in instalments.”
She gave the assurance that all the porters who were pregnant and those below 18 years would be “registered free of charge” and that they would also be provided with the new National Health Insurance Card, which would enable them to access medical care at any public hospital across the country.
For her part, the Metropolitan Chief Executive, Madam Patricia Appiagyei, said the assembly was not only providing accommodation for the porters but was also building their capacity in diverse ways to make them employable. She said Kumasi was developing at a fast rate and that was encouraging the youth across the country to go there in their numbers to seek employment opportunities.
She indicated that measures would be put in place to provide health care, educational and employment avenues to address the needs of those who flocked to the metropolis.
She, therefore, urged the porters to build their capacity more effectively and efficiently to make their future bright and enable them contribute more meaningfully to the socio-economic development of the country.
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