State-owned institution, the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) on Wednesday announced a strategic partnership with four Ghana Premier League Clubs at the Authority’s Auditorium in Accra.
The lofty partnership deal was struck with four newly promoted Ghana Premier League clubs namely Nsoatreman FC, Tamale City, Kotoku Royals and FC Samartex 1996.
As part of the partnership, the NHIS will help the four teams to register their players, officials, management and fans onto the insurance scheme. This top-notch sports marketing drive is to encourage soccer fans to check out everything about the NHIS brand and encourage people to enrol on the Scheme.
The deal forms part of the NHIA’s drive to address a huge gap between the Ghanaian populace that has health insurance cover and part of the populace that isn’t covered.
NHIA Chief Executive Officer Dr. Bernard Okoe-Boye tabbed the health insurance gap as the “biggest security threat” in Ghana. He stated half of Ghana’s 31 million population doesn’t have any form of health insurance cover before adding,
“It is our job as the NHIA to find innovative ways to rope Ghanaians on to the medical insurance and this partnership is going to help to do that. What we are doing is to allocate funds to register every footballer that is part of these teams on the health insurance…5000 minimum of their supporters on the health insurance…with GHC 200,000 we can register over 20,000 people who are connected to these teams”
Dr Okoe Boye revealed that the NHIS is anticipating registering about 20,000 persons affiliated with each of the four teams by the time the partnership agreement is done.
“This is a unique form of partnership. As you know we are not an organization that is commercial like GNPC which sells oil. We get money from the government with the aim of registering every Ghanaian on the scheme and whichever way we have to spend money on getting Ghanaians to register we are ready to do that.”
As part of the agreement, the NHIS logo will be on the jerseys of the four teams.
“We are looking at this as a pilot project, we could not start with all the teams in the league at a go which is why we chose these new entrants because they are containable. The deal with the clubs is for five years. We are going to learn a lot in the first year so that once we can show the gains in the first year we can convince the board and government to roll it out nationwide,” Dr Okoe Boye said when asked why the scheme selected the four clubs for this partnership.
Samartex Business Development Manager Paul Anyaba, Kotokou Royals CEO Linford Boadu Asamoah and representatives from Nsoatreman and Tamale City were present at the event and expressed their readiness to ensure the partnership is successful.
The 2022-2023 betPawa Ghana Premier League Season commences on September 9.
