Osun Health Insurance to train health workers on sign language interpretation

By Ismail Azeez, Osogbo

In a move to ensure inclusive healthcare, the Osun State Health Insurance Agency (OSHIA) on Thursday said the agency has concluded a plan to train nurses and other health workers in government hospitals on sign language interpretation in the state.

The agency disclosed that the aims is to bridge the communication gap between deaf or dumb pregnant women and healthcare providers

The Executive Secretary of the agency, Dr Rasaq Akindele stated this while featuring on NewsPoints, organised by the members of Osun NUJ Correspondents’ Chapel, Osogbo.

According to him, “We will train nurses  and other health workers that are in various government hospitals on how to interpret signs, so that at a particular time that any deaf or dumb pregnant woman comes to the hospital somebody would be there to interpret the signs to the doctors and the nurses on duty to get adequate health.”

Akindele expressed intentions to register all the pregnant women in the state into the scheme to have free healthcare services during the pregnancy.

Speaking on the achievements of the agency, since he took over the mantle of power, Dr Akindele said no fewer than 23,000 retirees have been enrolled into the Osun Health insurance Agency of the  State Government.

He said it was part of the State government’s  effort to ensure that retired civil servants received their  health benefits after their mandatory service years.

He said OSHIA, being an Agency saddled with the responsibility of ensuring, provision of health insurance scheme to the citizens of the state, hinted that there is continuous enrollment for those who are retiring from service on a daily basis.

He noted many people have benefited from the Agency since Governor Ademola Adeleke took over the leadership of the state.

Akindele stated that enrollment of pensioners have been digitised and as such had made it easier for them to  have access to health facilities for their health issues .

He lamented the rate of ignorance of people about Agency, saying the Agency had been carrying out Enlightenment programs for people to know how to go about their health issues,

He said, “One of the major challenges the Agency is having is about education. Many people still believed in an analog way of doing registration of the health insurance scheme. We have gone digital and many people are yet to follow the trend of things. This is why we have to partner with media organisations for various Enlightenment programmes of our Agency.

“The total enrollee in the formal sector is 244,000 and it is likely to increase when the governor starts employing the way he has promised. And in the informal sector, we have 13,462 enrollees; what we met on ground was little less than 4,000. And our aim is to capture nothing less than 6 percent of the people who are living in Osun State.

“We are coping with the little resources we have in OSHIA and at anytime we are running out fund and we have to get some succour from the governor

“We have code which anybody can go through our website to  get information and get all access to health insurance scheme programmes. We will continue to do our best to ensure that every citizen of this state benefits and cues into this program because health is wealth.”