(Possible Health Insurance Programme for Artists of Africa) A Dutch-supported foundation is 'exporting' private health insurance to Nigeria, selling a US$ 30 health-care package for US$3. Gary Humpherys reports. In Kwara state, a poor agricultural district in western Nigeria, health insurance is a rarity. Like 70% of Nigerians, most people survive on less than one dollar a day. If they visit the doctor at all, they have to pay out of their own pockets. However, this grim situation recently changed for one group of farmers. They are not covered by Nigeria’s National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), which despite being set up more than a decade ago, still only serves 3.73% of the population (civil servants working for the Federal government and in Bauchi and Cross River states, and 300 000 women and children under the Maternal and Child Health Project). Nor are they one of the seven million or so Nigerians, of a t...
