Workshop on health micro insurance schemes concludes

By A Staff Reporter

Kathmandu, June 1: The International Labour Organisation (ILO)'s week-long regional workshop on how to set up gender-sensitive health micro-insurance schemes in Asia ended Friday.

The workshop concluded that these schemes have managed to enable the poor to access quality care and reduce their burden of health costs. The training workshop was organised by the ILO Strategies and Tools Against Social Exclusion and Poverty (STEP) programme in collaboration with the ILO Training Centre. It brought together practitioners of micro-insurance from Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, the Philippines and Nepal.

Organisations that have already implemented successful health micro-insurance schemes, such as the Self-Employed Women's Association (SEWA) in India and Grameen and BRAC in Bangladesh, shared their experience and demonstrated their capacity to reach a large number of the vulnerable population in Asia. The increasing use by these internationally known organisations is testament to the potential of micro-insurance to meet the needs of the most deprived.

The training provided an opportunity for the participants to learn how to best set up and extend these innovative schemes in the communities they work in. During the closing ceremony, Ms. Francesca Moneti of ILO-STEP noted that the workshop served to establish and strengthen partnerships within individual countries as well as between countries. The participants unanimously recommended that ILO STEP set up an Asian Network on Micro-insurance through which health micro-insurance practitioners in Asia can share and consolidate their experiences.

In his closing remarks. Bill Musoke, UNFPA Representative, said that if porperly managed, health micro-insurance schemes carry enormous potential for transforming the most deprived.

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