The Managing Director/CEO of Ultimate Health Management Services, Lekan Ewenla, has urged Nigerians in the diaspora to begin diverting a fraction of their remittances to enrolling their loved ones on health insurance plans back home in Nigeria.
He said such an initiative could radically alter Nigeria’s dismal health indicators and drive sustainable development in the sector.
Speaking in Abuja, Ewenla described the informal flow of funds from abroad as immense but misdirected, saying that most of the money sent home is spent on rent, feeding, and other emergencies before health needs are even considered.
Ewenla, whose organisation recently launched the Diaspora Health Insurance Programme in partnership with Africa Diaspora Corporation and the U.S.-Africa Trade Commission, said the initiative is designed to plug the funding gaps in the country’s health system and shift healthcare from charity to structured investment
He said: “What Ultimate has done is enhance this process and its approach to health care services by activating a health insurance program for Nigerians in the diaspora to buy for their dependents back home.
“This is because one thing is very clear. Fact has revealed that informal transfer of funds from the diaspora back to Nigeria has been huge over the years, and further analysis of the flow of funds also reveals that the bulk of those funds that were deployed from the diaspora to their dependents back in Nigeria is to support them in accessing care.
“And the available fact has equally revealed that locally, most of those funds were not fully utilised to access care because of high rates of poverty and other major concerns that affect the standard of living of most Nigerians.
“Most times, when funds are deployed from the diaspora by Nigerians to their dependents back home, the fund meets rents, feeding, and other necessary expenditures before going to access care.
“Eventually, that fund is never utilised to procure health care services, which has led to a lot of health challenges and untimely deaths in the country.”
Saying that healthcare has become a multi-trillion-dollar investment space across the world, he noted that Nigeria must stop treating it like a social service.
Ewenla said with diseases like hypertension, diabetes, and cancer covered under the scheme, the programme can help achieve what the government alone cannot.
“Nigerians don’t go to the hospital until it gets to emergency level, and most of the time, we lose those people because the sickness has been managed at home for a very long time before going to the hospital.
“And why they do all of this is because of a lack of funds, which is now being addressed by this diaspora health insurance program. The volume of Nigerians abroad is huge. The volume of informal funds that are transmitted from abroad to Nigerians back home is humongous.
“So if a fraction of that is converted to providing health insurance for Nigerians back home, it will automatically change the narration of our health indices on the global and national scale,” he added.
