The Chief Executive Officer of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), Mr. Sylvester Mensah, says the scheme has make significant inroads in recent times compared to 2008.

According to him, discussing health insurance at a time when under five years mortality rate, maternal mortality and the life expectancy has drastically improved, per statistics by the Ghana Health Service, shows the effectiveness of the scheme.

He said this on an Accra based radio station on Monday.

Mr. Mensah added: “... We are discussing health insurance today when Ghana’s NHIS is currently one of the leading models in the world. You cannot talk about health insurance today without mention of Ghana’s model,” cautioning that “It is important to depoliticise health matters in the country.

The chief executive officer added that “we are looking at including prostate cancer in our benefit package going forward from January 2013 onwards.

The new law also provides for the inclusion of the physically challenged and mental health in the benefit package.

The law also makes provision for family planning in the benefit package. The health insurance scheme is also looking forward to setting up two additional state-of-the-act Claims Processing Centres - one in the North and the last in the Central region - and this will complete the whole revolution into claims management that will reduce the leakages and address the issues of abuse at that level.”

He added: “We are also looking forward to introducing the instant issuance of ID cards to address the perennial problem of delays in ID card distribution where individuals register and will have to wait for months.

He added that his outfit was looking forward to a nationwide rollout of capitation very soon.