The Rivers State Contributory Health Protection Programme (RIVCHPP) has continued to seek more collaborations and partnerships to engender wider healthcare coverage for the people of the state.
One of such collaborative moves saw the Acting Executive Secretary of RIVCHPP, Dr. Vetty Agala and her team on an advocacy visit to the State Commissioner for Local Government Affairs, Prince Charles Beke in his office in Port Harcourt.
During the visit, Dr. Agala requested that the ministry should liaise with the chairmen of the 23 councils of the state to facilitate enrolments to fill the gaps in BHCPF targets, enrolment of staff members in their various councils under the agency’s formal sector package and taking up more beneficiaries in their communities under the informal sector package so as to enjoy what the agency tagged: The Simjara Package.
Under The Simjara Package, enrollees pay only N15,000 that will give them access to different types of quality healthcare for one full calendar year.
Agala also used the medium to solicit the support of chairmen of the 23 councils to take up at least 2000 lives of their people under the health insurance scheme, saying that such a move would improve better health seeking behaviour and utilization of health facilities among community members.
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Speaking, Beke, who commended the agency on the way it has been carrying out its statutory responsibilities, pledged to support the process of ensuring that council chairmen comply with RIVCHPP’s requests.
He (Beke) also stressed that the ministry would create avenues and opportunities for officials of RIVCHPP to interface with and sensitize the chairmen to share the objectives of the programmes with them.
In another development, the management of Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI) has pledged its readiness and willingness to collaborate with the RIVCHPP with a view to achieving its set goals.
The CHAI team, led by Senior Programme Manager, Abubakar Yerima, made the pledge when it visited Agala in her office in Port Harcourt and pledged to give technical support to RIVCHPP towards achieving its goals, even as they would showcase the agency’s achievements in less than one year of its existence.
