Winneba (C/R), Dec. 12, GNA - The Managing Director of an Accra-based Software Engineering Consultancy Firm, Mr. Frank Quartey-Papafio, has appealed to health workers in the public sector to co-operate with the government in its efforts to put in place a lasting and more meaningful health delivery system for the nation.

Mr. Quartey-Papafio was speaking at the opening of a two-day orientation for 30 health providers drawn from the various government hospitals and clinics in the Awutu-Effutu-Senya District at Winneba. The course forms part of preparations being made by the Management of the Awutu-Effutu-Senya District Mutual Health Insurance Scheme (AESDMHIS) towards the commencement of the scheme. Mr Quartey-Papafio told participants that the rationale behind the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) was principally to give the poor in the society a strong health delivery guarantee and not the rich. "We shall be doing great disservice to the poor in the country if we failed to contribute individually and collectively, irrespective of our political, ethnic and religious leaning towards the realisation of the objectives of the health insurance scheme," Mr Quartey-Papafio added.

Earlier, Mr. Quartey-Papafio had taken participants through various aspects of the software the scheme was using and how they could adjust themselves to it to make their work easy when the scheme takes off. He therefore, charged Ghanaians not to play politics with the NHIS, stressing it was wrong for the citizenry to equate health issues with politics.

Mr. Chris Oddoye, Manager of the Awutu-Effutu-Senya District Mutual Health Insurance Scheme, expressed his appreciation to the participants for the high sense of co-operation, comportment, and enthusiasm they attached to the course and appealed to them to maintain it. Mr. Oddoye assured health providers in the district that management of the scheme would reciprocate the gesture exhibited by the participants by working hard in concert with them to make the scheme achieve resounding results.

Other resource persons were Mr. Mohammed Lacina Diaby MIS Manager and Mr. Ben Appiah Kubi, Claims Manager, both of the Awutu-Effutu-Senya District Mutual Health Insurance Scheme.