Wa, Dec. 31, GNA - The Wa Municipal Mutual Health Insurance Scheme has noted with concern high claims presented by private medical facilities in the area for the payment of malaria treatment and called on the government and donors to extend the subsidies on malaria to cover these facilities.

Mr John Bosco Zury, the Scheme Manager, said while the treatment malaria in the public medical facilities was heavily subsidized those in the private sector charged an average of 45,000 cedis per malaria patient.

Mr Zury told the GNA in an interview that the cost of treating the disease in these private health institutions that did not enjoy the subsidy was draining the financial resources of the scheme.

He said the cost of medical services in general escalated in the area as soon as the scheme took off and that such tendencies needed to be curtailed in order to ensure the sustainability of the scheme. Mr Zury said people in the municipality were responding to the scheme with 9,610 persons joining it in December, bringing the total figure to 57,133 out of which 35,870 of them had been issued with their identity cards.

He attributed this positive development to intensified education campaign through the use of senior secondary school leavers and testimonies of clients who had already benefited from the scheme. The Wa Municipal Scheme had so far settled 1.966 billion cedis as medical claims of 31,718 clients during the year and received total premiums of 1.098 billion cedis while 1.687 billion cedis was received from the national secretariat of the NHIS. 31 Dec 06