HEALTH POLICY AND BENEFICIARY SATISFACTION: A STUDY OF THE BASIC HEALTH CARE PROVISION FUND IN THE FEDERAL CAPITAL TERRITORY, NIGERIA

Abstract

The Nigerian health system has historically underperformed resulting in poor health indicators from the sector. Key to this poor performance is that many Nigerians lack access to health care services due to their inability to afford payment for health services when and where they need it. The Basic Health Care Provision Fund was introduced as a key health policy initiative by the Federal Government of Nigeria to tackle this challenge and make healthcare services both affordable and available to the vast majority of Nigerians who are poor and vulnerable as a result of which they are unable to access health care services. This study presents an overview of the BHCPF policy and its implementation in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) with a focus in three area councils (AMAC, Bwari, and Gwagwalada). Findings indicate that the scheme implementation started in the FCT in 2020. Findings further indicate that even though the implementation is going on successfully, the scheme may not successfully achieve its five-year specific objectives of significantly reducing out-of-pocket health expenditure and introducing an Emergency Health Treatment Scheme (emergency health payment and ambulance scheme) for FCT residents. The sources of data used were both primary and secondary. A survey was done using a structured questionnaire in randomly selected area councils within the FCT and was quantitatively analyzed with the use of SPSS. That of secondary data was analyzed qualitatively. Features of the BHCPF were explained from the information gotten from the BHCPF guideline. From the study 58.5% of respondents showed negative perception regarding the existence of functional ambulances while 83.5% remained neutral or disagreeing and 16% agreed with the existence of functional ambulances, more studies on the availability of medical response services showed 53.5% strongly disagreed, 72.5% remained neutral or strongly disagreeing while 27.0% agreed with the availability of such a service, more study also showed a negative perception regarding spending less from their pocket on medical services since 2018, 53.5% indicated either strongly disagree or disagree, 68.0% remained neutral or disagreeing while 31.5% agreed with their reduced out-of-pocket expenditure. Recommendations include the need to increase funding for the Scheme and make its management more accountable to achieve the desired objectives of the policy.