VPWA Health Insurance Fund for the Poor
Project Overview
When VPWA volunteer, Katharina Faber, witnessed a young child in a local Ghanian hospital being denied important health care because his parents could not afford it and they had no health insurance, she decided that the VPWA should do something.
Katharina approached the boy's parents and asked them why they had not signed up to the government's health insurance scheme (at a cost of 12 Euros per year) and the answer was a simple one, they did not have that money. Unable to bear to see the boy left untreated, Katharina paid for the treatment of the child.
She later discussed her experience with VPWA's Executive Director. The VPWA decided to create a fund to provide health insurance for poor families who are unable to afford the insurance premium to subscribe to the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS).
This fund relies on contributions from individuals to enable VPWA to sign up Ghana's poorest families to the government's nationwide insurance scheme.
Who benefits and how is the selection of families done?
Identifying poor families who need health insurance but cannot afford it, is a relatively easy task for VPWA because we are already engaged at a grassroots level in many needy communities. The District Health Centre and the Social Welfare Department also make recommendations to us based on their constant engagement with people in some of these communities.
VPWA will consider sponsoring a family when we can verify that they do not have the money to sign on to the NHIS. The Social Welfare department runs a livelihood support programme which covers those who are generally classified as ‘extremely poor’. VPWA focuses on helping these families to access health care through our sponsorship. We also check how many dependents (children under 18) are in each family as these children are automatically covered in the NHIS if we sponsor their parents. To help as many people as possible we focus on families with a high dependency ratio.
We are very grateful to the following donors who have contributed to the VPWA Health Insurance Fund so far:
Gerhard Buerstner
Elisabeth Faber Family and Friends
Family Klein and Friends
To contribute to the health insurance fund please contact hayford@vpwa.org
Thank you