Ultimate Health, a health insurance organization, has unveiled a new diaspora-focused insurance product designed to enhance healthcare accessibility in Nigeria. In a statement, the company’s managing director and CEO, Lekan Ewenla, highlighted that the initiative empowers Nigerians abroad to secure medical coverage for their dependents residing in Nigeria.
Addressing Nigerians living abroad, Ewenla cautioned that paying for health care out of pocket was no longer sustainable and was fraught with dangers, particularly in emergencies
He commended the federal government for making health insurance mandatory, saying it would enhance the well-being of citizens and change the long-standing healthcare challenge of the country.
Ultimate Health has now taken the bull by the horns by introducing the Diaspora Health Insurance Program. This Diaspora Health Insurance Program is designed to encourage Nigerians in the diaspora to enroll their dependents back home in the health insurance program. He stated that funds sent by Nigerians abroad to their dependents at home for health care were not usually used for such purposes.
Most times, when funds are deployed from the diaspora by Nigerians to their dependents back home, the funds meet rents, feeding, and other necessary expenditures before going to health care. Eventually, such funds are never utilized to procure health care services, which has led to a lot of health challenges and untimely deaths in the country.
According to him, the company is in partnership with the Africa Diaspora Corporation and the United States Africa Trade Commission to expose Nigerians in the Diaspora to its health insurance products.
Explaining the importance of the scheme, he stated, “The moment Nigerians in the diaspora enroll their dependents back home, the pressure of ‘someone is sick; we need to take him to the hospital, or he’s in admission and we need to pay for his medications’ is eliminated.”
According to him, the program is regulated by the federal government to ensure that the health insurance organizations comply with the set standards.
He also said, “The reason the government enacted the health insurance law was to gravitate towards making health care a lot more affordable, accessible, and equitable, and what we are saying here is that Nigerians should start embracing health insurance because it was made for us as a member of the United Nations to work under the treaty of the United Nations. Nigerians don’t go to the hospital until it gets to the 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.”
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