By Yunus S Saliu
As the mass birth and national health insurance scheme registration exercise kicked off on 2nd August 2022 in The Gambia, the Health Promotion and Education unit of the Ministry of Health, Tuesday, continued to sensitize and discuss the requirements need to register and acquire the birth certificate and the national health insurance scheme membership card.
Also, they used the opportunity provided by the Tuesday press briefing to clarify some of the people’s misconception regarding who is qualified to be registered in the country for both exercises, the challenges, and the ministry’s impression as the exercise continue.
Lamin B Fatty, Registrar for birth and death at the Ministry of Health elaborated on the required documents for the registrations in each category and the issues surrounding them.
He disclosed that the mass birth registration targeting everybody is in two folds, the target of all legible Gambians for the birth registration “they should be given new birth certificate irrespective of whether they have a birth certificate or not. And all residents including national of the Gambia are all legible for the insurance card.”
He noted that the exercise has availed the Ministry to train more competent people on the use of the devices on modalities of registration, to have the skills and abilities to deliver as expected. Also, “we have efficient technicians trained on extra hardware knowledge not only on software so that they can help the team when they are on the field to address any situation that might arise from the user devices,” he added.
The Registrar disclosed that every applicant is required to present any of the supporting documents for the registration while he identified the required documents saying “you must be born in The Gambia having a birth certificate, national identification card, passport, driver’s license, resident permit; infant welfare card (IWC), while applicant without required national documents is required to provide attestation from the alkalo of his or her community.”
One of the challenges having at the registration centers that he outlined is that most of the applicants come with and ID card that does not align with their parents and “legally all children born must have document aligning to their parents, which is one of the reasons parent documents are needed. Therefore, it is essential every time for people to come forward with the parent supporting documents.”
He emphasized that the birth certificate is only meant for the Gambians either born in The Gambia or Diaspora. “But if you naturalized you are not entitled to the country birth certificate but you are entitled to the naturalization documents which if you flout the naturalization protocols can be withdrawn from you. So if you are naturalized and you are in the country you can be given a health insurance card but not a birth certificate. You can also be given an international passport based on naturalization but not a birth certificate. You may have all the other national documentation but except the birth certificate, it is very unique everywhere,” he explained in detail.
He further explained that “if you are born to non-Gambians in the country you are also entitled to be given a birth certificate, example if your parents are from another country settling in The Gambia and you are born in the country you will be given your birth certificate indicating that you are born to non-Gambian parents so that when you go back to your home country you will not become a stateless person.”
Modou Njie, Director of Health Promotion and Education reiterated that the target duration for the exercise is three months while he urged everyone to go register and get the documents – birth certificate and the national health insurance scheme card.
He said the exercise, presently, is impressive as people are turning up to get the documents.
The Tuesday press briefing marked the second press briefing to discuss the exercise which should be on weekly basis.
However, prior to the official commencement or launching of the exercise on Tuesday, the Ministry held a demonstration exercise of the Civil Registration and Vital Statistic exercise held at the SOS village in Bakoteh.
