Dr. Ifeoma Monye, founder, Society for Lifestyle Medicine in Nigeria (SOLONG), on Wednesday, advised the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) to adopt lifestyle medicine as a way of boosting national healthcare.
Monye told News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) that lifestyle medicine if adopted by NHIS, would be more effective than conventional medicine.
She said that behavioural attitudes such as laughter, exercise, quality rest should be made available as services of the NHIS to the health advantage of Nigerians.
“We are saying that conventional medicine should be adjunct, and not the first recommendation.
“NHIS should adopt lifestyle medicine as a way to go in delivering health services in order to keep the people healthy,” Monye said.
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The medical practitioner said for instance, lifestyle medicine was the best preventive intervention in mental issues.
According to her, NHIS needs to train a pool of professionals on lifestyle medicine to render services to the subscribers.
Monye, who stressed the need for behavioural changes, said happier people were usually healthier people.
She explained that it was high time for people to cultivate good social relations for their wellbeing.
The SOLONG founder urged people to always watch what they eat, adding that healthier foods were necessary for healthy living.
She said that lifestyle medicine had a lot to do in the management of overweight and depression for effective results.
NAN reports that health insurance is basically, a social security system that guarantees the provision of needed health services to persons on the payment of token contributions at regular intervals.
The insured pays part of the cost and the insurer reimburses it, or the insurer makes payments directly to the provider, all depending on the type of health insurance coverage the individual subscribes to. (NAN)
