Abstract:

One of the most effective way to achieve universal health coverage with sufficient financial protection for everyone against medical costs is through health insurance, which is widely acknowledged as effective strategy. Health insurance among pregnant women is crucial to ensure financial protection, but also having health insurance is one of indicator of the readiness of pregnant women for complication and delivery process.

Methodology: This was a cross-sectional study that was conducted at Nyamagana district among three health centres that included all pregnant women that attends antenatal clinic in selected health care. A semi-structured, pretested interviewer questionnaire was used to collect the data. Data was analysed using SPSS version 20 and associations between selected socio-demographic characteristics and awareness of the health insurance, level of statistical significance will be set at p< 0.05.

Results: This study findings described that, majority of participants were Christian who were married with education qualification of secondary education and majority were of sukuma tribe followed by chagga. Self-employment was the major occupation of participants whereby on health insurance status only 84 had health insurance compared to the remaining 122 who had no health insurance but interestingly majority had awareness on the health insurance benefits on their health system provision.

Conclusion: This study findings concludes that, majority of pregnant women attending ANC at the four selected health facility were aware and have heard of health insurance system but interestingly only few of them have been using/provided services through the health insurance system. Furthermore, majority of these pregnant womens are aware of the benefits of having a health insurance system on provision of their medical services.