Denu (V/R), July 10, GNA - Mr Owusu Agyei, a Deputy Minister of Health has attributed the slow take-off of the Mutual Health Insurance Scheme in the districts to ineffective education of the people on the policy.

He said as a result, many people were in doubt about value and benefits of the policy and were waiting on the sidelines to see how it worked out before joining the various schemes.

Mr Agyei, who is also the Member of Parliament (MP) for Efutu said this when he inaugurated the Ketu District Mutual Health Insurance Scheme (KDMHS) and its 18-member Board of Directors at a durbar at Denu on Friday.

He said as a social re-engineering programme, the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) empowered people to determine and manage their own health in line with government policy of protecting the vulnerable against the social and economic realities in the country.

Mr Agyei said the scheme was a good pool for increasing access to health care in the country as against the Cash and Carry System. He, however, said despite the slow start, the scheme was on course, adding that, government had released funds to all districts to facilitate commencement of operations.

The Minister said it was hoped that by the close of August this year, all district schemes would have been launched. Mr Kofi Dzamesi, Volta Regional Minister and member of the board said the NHIS was a social programme with nothing political about it, warning that, any effort to give political twist to it would not win any merit.

Mr Justice Cudjoe, Ketu District Chief Executive (DCE) said with its inauguration, people would abandon their wait-and-see attitude and join the KDMHIS, which has so far registered a total of 103,000 people with 39,000 readily legible to access the facility. Mr Obed Okudzeto, a businessman, is the Chairman of the KDMHIS Board. July 10, 2005