Health Experts Advocate Insurance Coverage For IVF Treatment
Health experts have called on the government to support Nigerians with fertility challenge by providing insurance coverage to access In-Vitro Fertilization treatment (IVF).
They lamented that government has not taken fertility treatment seriously as many insurance companies in health sector belittle or overlook fertility aspect and do not want to get involved in IVF treatment.
The Chief Medical Director of Deda hospital, Dr. Sunday Onuh, who stated this during the launch of the Radiography Unit of the hospital, disclosed that in January, the Medical Unit of the Central Bank of Nigeria took the step by signing into law, to sponsor their staff with challenge in child birth, particularly those who have primary infertility.
He said: “Insurance generally, either National Health Insurance Scheme or private health insurance none have delve into and that is an area government can come in and help the masses.”
Dr. Onuh also lamented the high import duty on IVF product which has made cost of treatment to be very high. He called on government to reduce import duty on the product and provide them with forex to import those products so that they could stop patronizing black market so as to make IVF more affordable for people.
He said “These are ways government can come in and make things affordable. If import duty is so high, exchange rate is high cost to the consumer will be high but if those things go down cost to the consumer will be low.”
Speaking on the newly acquired MRI machine, the CMD said: “The MRI machine can compete with anyone in the world because it is the latest specification for MRI and makes medical imaging conspicuous with sharp imaging, when you need to make diagnosis with sharp imaging. It is faster than the specifications that has been in existence.
“The better the imaging, the lesser the time you need to subject the patient of going through the machine. The resolution is very high and clear and you don’t have to be over specialize before you can interpret to the.
“Before now we have been sending patient out and they come back on stories of how they were delayed but now with the speed you can get things done same day This makes diagnosis fast and instituting treatment promptly makes it easier for us and also for the patients.”
Adding: “As a hospital and also as a unit, we have plans to expand as radiology does not just stop at MRI, there are other areas we are looking to go into in the near future. We want a one-stop kind of hospital where all the departments are representstoped, we have been building on it gradually.
“We only recently introduced the plastic surgery unit, where we have done major plastic surgery with fantastic result. We also do vaginal rejuvenation wherein one has some tear that has not healed. We have been doing a lot of reconstruction. The area we want to go into is using laser machine for the rejuvenation to bring back the tone of the vagina”, he stated.
