Upper West Regional Minister, Ephraim Avea Nsoh has appealed to the National Health Insurance Authority to include indigenous languages on their call centers. The National Health Insurance Authority set up a call center to receive complaints, enquiries and feedbacks from prospective and existing members nationwide in six languages namely; English, Dagbani, Twi, Hausa, Ewe and Ga. Dr. Ephraim Nsoh himself a language and culture expert said the inclusion of indigenous languages from the region will also give the people the opportunity to voice out their concerns on the scheme. The minister made the appeal at the commissioning of a sixty-five thousand Ghana cedi ultra modern edifice with the state of the art equipment to be used as the Regional Health Insurance Office. Dr. Nsoh said to mitigate delays in the acquisition of ID cards, the scheme will soon introduce biometric registration and issuance of instant ID cards which is already been piloted with the Ghana Armed Forces and the Ghana Police Service. In addition, a claims procession centre will be established to take care of the three northern regions. The minister also called for the decentralization of the offices of the NHIS. ‘‘Once again we are not in the Northern territories. That was before 1957. I now have my Region called Upper West Region and I don’t need to pray in Tamale. A lot of things are stocked in Tamale. Meetings, conferences, passports centre and everything and now we have call centre in Tamale. I want to have it all in my region and I am no more in Tamale,’’ he fumes. He said despite the success story of the scheme in the region, active members enrolled in the region on the scheme as at the end of the first quarter of 2013 stands at 421,988 representing 56.77% of the region, a figure he is not impressed with. He tasked all scheme managers and the Municipal District Assemblies to increase membership drive and achieve at least 75% coverage by the end of 2014 in the region. The National Chief Executive Officer, Sylvester Mensah in a speech read on his behalf by the Corporate Affairs Director, Oswald Essuah-Mensah said the scheme since its introduction, a decade ago has grown to become s major instrument of financing health care delivery in the country. He said the scheme is credited for an improvement in the health-seeking behavior of many people in the country with membership and utilization of health care services growing significantly. Mr. Mensah said the scheme currently covers over 8 million active subscribers through a network of over 3,200 service providers, accounting for more than 85% of internally generated funds of healthcare services.