Embrace health insurance, Malawians urged
An insurance expert at Vision Fund International (VFI) Ndumiso Mpofu has urged Malawians to consider increasing the uptake of health insurance as a way of hedging against ill-health, among many other benefits.
Mpofu, who is a Zimbabwe-based VFI Insurance Advisor made the plea on Tuesday when he visited Nkhatabay district, kick-starting his two-week field mission designed to drum up demand for health insurance among farmers.
Currently, VFI and World Vision International (WVI) have already partnered with Medical Aid Society of Malawi (Masm) in providing highly subsidized medical schemes that are benefiting VFI clients and WVI farmers.
Two insurance schemes are already on offer, namely, Ufulu Medical Scheme and HospCash scheme under an umbrella name Accidents, Sickness and Health Insurance for Savings for Transformation.
“We are focusing on families that don’t have health protection…we have seen that Covid-19 has depleted people’s incomes, hence coming up with this health insurance,” said Mpofu, who jetted into the country last Sunday.
A call by Mpofu comes at a time when less than two percent of the country’s 18 million plus population does not have any kind of medical insurance, according to a local health insurance expert Macdonald Wella.
VFI and WVI are piloting the project in two African countries and these are Malawi and Ghana.
In Malawi the target is to have 14, 349 people with health insurance.
Citing World Health Organisation (WHO) recent findings, Mpofu lamented that globally over 100 million people are impoverished because of health challenges, stressing that about 30 million children suffer secondary health related impacts.
Speaking separately, VFI-Malawi Insurance Manager Alfred Thawale explained that beneficiaries of the highly-subsidized schemes can pay as low as K10,500 a year and in return enjoy medical treatment of up to K450, 000 per annum at any Masm supported facility.
Darlington Kasambara, a participant of World Vision’s THRIVE Project in Malawi, who has just purchased an Ufulu Medical Scheme for his wife and two children, hoped that: “This is a very good product because it will help me in times sickness.”
Ufulu medical scheme age limit is 65 for adults and 18 for children, but if the child is in school, the cut-off point is 25 years.
On one hand, Hospcash medical scheme age limit is 18 to 68 for adults and three months to 17 years for children but 24 years for children still in school. Under the same scheme, there is also provision for funeral assistance of K200,000.
There is no age limit for people with disabilities under both schemes.
