The National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) has expressed its commitment to working with partners to accelerate efforts towards achieving Universal Health Coverage (UHC) in the country through transformative initiatives. Dr Da-Costa Aboagye, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the NHIA, said as part of the Authority's short to medium term plans, it was undertaking some major policy reforms to expand access to essential healthcare services and systems to realise the UHC and improve upon the life expectancy rate in the country. He was speaking at a stakeholders' forum, organised by the NHIA, in Takoradi, as part of the Authority's strategies to build capacity and enhance stronger relations with the media. He said: 'There have been new reforms in the NHIA where some have been proposed and others implemented within the last four months… the NHIA is actually taking a bold step to address certain health issues head-on.' Dr Aboagye said as part of the reforms, the Authority recently launched the 'Free Annual Health Check-up' programme, a preventive healthcare initiative that is aimed at helping to address the rise in non-communicable and chronic diseases in the country. He said the programme would provide an opportunity for all Ghanaians to visit any health facility of their choice on their months of birth for free comprehensive screening for early detection and treatment or management of potential health problems. 'What this means is that it changes the architecture of the health system in Ghana because for over 20 years now, the system has been curative, so the preventive healthcare has come to address the wellness component of the Sustainable Development Goal Three,' The NHIA CEO stated. Touching on other policy reforms, Dr Aboagye said the NHIA had started a pilot programme to issue Ghana cards to children between age six and 14 to replace the use of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) cards for accessing healthcare services. He said: 'Now we are saying that your Ghana card is your NHIS card, and we have noted that children between the ages of six and 14 do not have the Ghana card, so, instead of printing our card which cost about $4 to $6 dollars each, we are rather printing the Ghana card for them so that we will save the country some monies. 'Once we do this, we will be achieving the UHC because we will be enrolling all Ghanaians to have access to healthcare services through the Ghana card.' The NHIA CEO also mentioned that the Authority had put in place robust systems like the Electronic Pharmacy (e-Pharmacy) platform to deal with issues of illegal charges paid by NHIS clients at health facilities. Dr Aboagye said all these reforms and others yet to be implemented would help to strengthen the NHIS to deliver on its mandates to help improve upon the healthcare services delivery in the country. Source : Ghana News Agency