Willingness to enroll in Social Health Insurance and associated factors among Household Heads in Obio/Akpor Local Government Area of Rivers State

Background: Social health insurance (SHI) schemes cover the healthcare needs of the informal sector workers, provide them with financial protection, minimize the equity gap, reduce Out-Of-Pocket (OOP) spending, and enhance utilization of the healthcare system. Objective: To determine the willingness to enrol in SHI and its associated factors among household heads in Obio-Akpor Local Government Area (LGA) of Rivers state. Method: This community-based cross-sectional study was carried out using the clusters and the EPI random walk sampling technique to obtain data from 205 selected household heads who were administered with an interviewer-administered questionnaire. The collected data was analysed using SPSS version 21. Result: According to the findings, majority of the respondents were males (58.5%), aged between 31 to 45 years (52.7%), married (57.1%), completed the tertiary level of education (65.4%), employed or self-employed (95.1%), from a family size of 3 to 4 (56.1%) and earned 50,000 to 100,000 Naira monthly (27.8%). Also, 63.0% are not enrolled in any health insurance scheme out of which 60.5% are not willing to enrol, with lack of trust in the management of the scheme, no believe in paying for sickness or have other means of meeting their healthcare needs identified as the major reasons. However, younger age, higher educational level, employment status, and earning >50,000 to 100,000 monthly had statistically (p<0.05) significant effect on the willingness of the respondents to enrol on SHI Conclusion: This result showed a low level of enrolment in health insurance as well as willingness to enrol in Shi, hence, both insurance companies, government and even Non-Governmental Organisation should carry out strategic campaigns to dispel false rumours about SHI while outlining the merits.