The Bonny Community Health Insurance Programme (BCHIP) and a virtual news medium, Kristina Reports, say they would converge efforts at creating awareness and scaling up sensitization for the former’s community health sustainability initiative.

Coordinator of BCHIP, Ernest Ikeh disclosed this on Monday, March 25, 2024 when he, alongside BCHIP’s Client Service Officer, Amarachi Orji, paid a courtesy visit to Kristina Reports office in Bonny, Rivers State.

The Bonny Community Health Insurance Programme (BCHIP) is a Community-Based Health Insurance initiative that is sponsored by Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas Limited (NLNG) in partnership with the Rivers State Government and Bonny Kingdom for residents of Bonny Island.

He informed that the BCHIP team was at Kristina Reports to convey the appreciation of the Board and Management of the Programme for the support the online newsmagazine availed it during its 4th anniversary celebration.

“We also want to use this medium to thank the organization for your support when we did our 4th anniversary. It was more like to appreciate our corporate organizations and also to showcase some of our good deeds that we have done in the past for people to know the importance and benefits of the program.”

He further informed that the team also embarked on a monitoring and familiarization tour of their partners around the community with a view to fashioning out workable and service enhancing partnerships for improved medical services to Bonny Community.

About the deliverables of the health insurance programme, the BCHIP Coordinator stated that through the health maintenance organizations (HMOs) the programme has continued to deliver on its mandate with testimonies abounding of in-patient and out-patient care, maternal and child care, and surgeries, among several others forms of medicare.

“We are doing our best as the foot soldiers also to see how we can explore the sustainability roadmap where the program will come and stay not that the program will come and go.”

“As people that are custodians of this program we have seen so many things like my colleague was telling you about the testimonies from people that have benefited; how some person’s that have been living with illness that they never knew that would be cured, how so many persons have benefited from surgeries, pregnant women have thought of raising money to go pay for their caesarian sections but with the help of Bonny Community Health Insurance Program, these things are now a thing of the past.”

“They are living their normal lives now. Some of them have gone back to their usual work. The people that have put to bed their baby have even grown; that reminds me – our first baby is now four years old plus and she us doing pretty well.”

“So, these are some of the testimonies that inform our visit here. By God’s grace, as we continue with this, like Oliver Twist, we will still ask for your support where we get our feet on the ground. So that together we can achieve a better Bonny island.”

Responding, the Publisher and Chief Executive Officer of Kristina Reports, Godswill Jumbo stated that the initiative always has the support of the media company, indicating that Kristina Reports corporate goal aims at supporting efforts that would make the society a better one and project Bonny Kingdom in a good light.

“Thank you very much for coming around. From the time we got to know about the Bonny Community Health Insurance Program, we found it as something very commendable, an initiative as we learnt by the King seeking to provide healthcare coverage at an affordable and accessible way for his people; and this has become reality now.”

“Like you’ve said, for all of these years several people have benefited and for us here in Kristina Reports we are beneficiaries as part of our efforts to ensure regulatory compliance.”

“While looking for ways to provide healthcare coverage for our staff, we came across the BCHIP and then we had to onboard all our staff and Kristina’s Report has 100% coverage.”

“Now, for the initiative itself, we are always ready to support noble initiatives, initiatives that help the society to progress or to become better and I think health is at the core of everything and like they say, health is wealth, even for us as a media organization.”

“We can’t function optimally if we are not all healthy. Like every other initiative around Bonny Kingdom and anywhere else we are always ready to support, at least, to provide that visibility, awareness and sensitization for people to understand what you are doing and be able to project it to the whole world.”

“We will continue to do that because we believe that society will be better when certain things are in place and I think health is key. Somebody that is healthy will be able to seek for a means of livelihood, want to seek for how to make his or her life better. But the person that is sick he can’t even fend for himself and if he’s the breadwinner of the family, that’s a lot of problem.”

“So, we will support. We are always open any day; any time. Thank you very much for coming.”