MoH plans to include housewives on health insurance scheme

Out of 235,000, 215,00 women married to Kuwaitis

By Marwa Al Bahrawi

KUWAIT CITY, Dec 30: Assistant Undersecretary for Legal Affairs at the Ministry of Health Dr Mahmoud Abdulhadi said the ministry is conducting feasibility study to include housewives in the category of retirees on the health insurance scheme, ‘Afia’.

The ministry has already proposed applying the health insurance scheme on retirees in the first phase before it is generalized on all citizens in batches and segments.

In a statement, Dr Abdulhadi added the ministry started notifying concerned authorities to determine the number of retirees and the total cost of implementing the project after inclusion of the segment, noting the study might take at least one year to complete.

As regards the latest development on Afia project, Dr Abdulhadi said beneficiaries of the project have reached 93,000 and the ministry has only received 10 complaints since the introduction of the scheme about two and half months ago. He noted the complaints are related to the addition of new services within the scope of coverage and have nothing to do with the standard of service.

Meanwhile, there are 641,282 women constituting 49 percent of Kuwaiti population and 666,323 men representing 51 percent, according to statistics of the Public Authority for Civil Information (PACI) for the first half of the year.

It also identified a total of 235,000 married Kuwaiti women of which 215,000 are married to Kuwaitis and 18,000 to other Arabs nationals, 699 to Asians, 323 to North Americans, 170 to Europeans, 66 to South Americans, 32 to Australians and 23 are married to Africans.

It noted 139,000 Kuwaiti ladies aged 15 and above aren’t married, besides 37,000 divorcees and 27,000 widows, while the marital status of 500 others is unknown.