Health status of senior citizens vis-à-vis the National Health Insurance Scheme in Nigeria

Abstract

The need to increase comprehensive health services to senior citizens in Nigeria after serving their fatherland cannot be over-emphasized; and the recent efforts of the government to encourage this through the National Health Insurance Scheme (hereafter referred to as (NHIS) is highly commendable. The objective of the paper is to examine the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) vis-a-vis the health status of these senior citizens to see how they can benefit from the scheme after their service years. A doctrinal approach is adopted in this paper which relies on references from primary and secondary sources relevant to this work. The paper finds the need to review the NHIS to enable the senior citizens benefit from the scheme for sustainability of their health as provided in similar programmes for their counterparts in some other countries. It is concluded that the extension of this NHIS specifically to senior citizens will go a long way in the management of their health by their dependants as well as paving way for remarkable changes in the efforts to protect and safeguard their health. The paper recommends a review of this scheme to accommodate the management of the health services of the senior citizens in Nigeria as well as subsidizing same in tandem with practices in some other climes.

Keywords: Nigeria, Health, Senior Citizens, National Health Insurance Scheme