Community healthcare financing scheme: findings among residents of a rural community

Abstract

Setting: The current, most urgent world problem in the provision of healthcare is adequate services in rural areas. Nigeria’s government intends to expand the National Health Insurance Scheme to cover people employed in the informal sector using Community Healthcare Financing Scheme.

Objectives: Assessing what adult residents of Gwafan village, Plateau State, Nigeria were aware of and knew regarding the scheme, their practices and to determine the challenges faced.

Design: A cross sectional, community-based study.

Results: Knowledge of the scheme was good among 36(11%) and poor among 290(89%) of them. Though 3(1%) mentioned awareness of the scheme’s existence in their community, none were active participants as 2(0.6%) were indifferent. There was a statistically significant relationship, Fischers <0.0001 between sex and the scheme’s knowledge.

Conclusion: Knowledge of the scheme was poor among majority of the respondents and none were active participants. Bribery and corruption was the most strongly agreed upon challenge