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A nine-member Senegalese delegation, led by the Deputy Minister for Health and Social Welfare, Mame Abdoulaye Gueye, is currently in Ghana to understudy the country�s National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS). The visit by the Senegalese delegation is followed by several other delegations from the African continent to the country�s National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) to study how the model NHIS works. The three-day working visit offered the Senegalese delegation the opportunity to nurture their one year old health insurance scheme. Mame Abdoulaye Gueye told journalists in Accra, through an interpreter, that Ghana should be commended for their outstanding health insurance system, which aims at providing quality and affordable healthcare for the people. He is, therefore, counting on the expertise of Ghana�s National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) to help make their newly-established NHIS to succeed. Mr. Abdoulaye Gueye explained to the journalists at the plush NHIA headquarters that the Senegal President had impressed upon the Health Ministry to tap the expertise of the Ghanaian model, to ensure that the level of coverage moved from 20% to 70%. �That is why we are here to learn from our brothers and sisters in Ghana,� he stated. According to him, they were supposed to grow the coverage as far high as 70%, which they saw was a great challenge, hence they coming to Ghana to understudy the Ghanaian shining model. In his own words: �That is the reason why we have come over to Ghana to be able to take a look at Ghana�s best practices in national health insurance, and to see what lessons we can learn from the Ghanaian model; that is why we have come to Ghana to learn lessons from the Ghanaian experience, but particularly, to be able to know the difficulties and the challenges that Ghana is having in its system, so that we don�t go about reinventing the wheel and going through certain problems that Ghana may have had.� On his part, a Deputy Chief Executive Officer in charge of operations at the NHIA, Mr. Nathaniel Otoo, stated that the Senegalese delegation made some useful suggestions to improve the NHIS, saying: �We have a lot of improvement to do, and one thing that these delegations bring is also a critique from a point of view that is independent of the system that we have in Ghana.� Some of the improvements made in the NHIS have been a result of suggestions from other relevant stakeholders in the health sector within and outside Ghana, he added. At the time of the media encounter, representatives from the NHIA were seen taking the visiting Senegalese delegation through topics, including: quality assurance; credentials and clinical audit; claims management within the NHIS; and Finance and Management.