Ghana’s president, Nana Akufo-Addo has expressed optimism that all arrears owed service providers under the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) would be cleared within 18 months.

The scheme over the years has been hit with a lot of challenges with health service providers threatening on several occasions not to attend to subscribers because they have not been paid their claims.

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In some cases, service providers have threatened to return to the days where health care service will only be delivered after patients have paid for the services.

But speaking to the Ghanaian community in Belgium on Tuesday, June 6, as part of his visit to the European country ahead of the meetings of the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals Advocates Group of Eminent Personalities, Nana Akufo-Addo said his government would do all it can to ensure that the NHIS does not collapse.

“The scheme has been threatened by mismanagement and by huge indebtedness. We are now having to liquidate systematically the arrears so that the service providers can be encouraged to provide services for NHIS card holders. I am hoping that within 18 months, all the arrears of the NHIS would have been settled, so that we can have a secure future for the scheme,” he said.