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Free clinics in Pakistan promote microinsurance for healthcare

Countries
Pakistan
Sources
AKDN
Publication date
Origin
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Several hundred clients of the First Microinsurance Agency (FMiA) in Karachi were offered basic outpatient care, along with information on health insurance, in a new programme designed to make poor people aware of microinsurance services and their benefits. The clinics, which are sponsored by FMiA, are run by two qualified doctors.

The health clinics programme, which is expected to continue, is meant to help fulfill FMiA's goal of providing affordable insurance products carefully tailored to the needs of poor families.

"FMiA hopes to keep playing an important role in making health care easily available to its clients and others that need it," said Al Malik Khoja, the acting CEO of FMiA.

Microinsurance services offered by FMiA include: hospitalisation insurance, savings completion and credit life. Counselors at the clinics offer advice on microinsurance products, including how:

- Health insurance provides cashless coverage for medical expenses incurred in private and medical hospitals due to serious illnesses, obstetric care and accidents,

- Savings completion ensures that a family's savings objectives are met even in the event of the death or injury of the breadwinner,

- Credit life helps to protect the family of the loan borrower from debt in case of death or serious disability.

The clinics, which provide services related to outpatient care and basic screening, were offered in the Landh, New Karachi and Malir, all neighbourhoods of Karachi, starting on 22 October 2009. Sixty percent of the patients were female and 25 percent were children. The last of the clinics took place in the Baldia Town neighbourhood on 1 November 2009.

FMiA Pakistan is the first of two microinsurance institutions operated by the Aga Khan Agency for Microfinance (AKAM). FMiA focuses on the needs of poor families, in both the formal and informal economies, by providing them with a range of financial products that will help protect their assets and well-being.

For more information, please contact:

Aliyah Esmail
Aga Khan Agency for Microfinance
1-3 Avenue de la Paix
1202 Genève Switzerland
Tel: +41 22 909 7200
Fax: +41 22 909 7290
Email: aliyah.esmail@akdn.org

Notes

About the Aga Khan Agency for Microfinance

Since its establishment in 2005, AKAM has brought together over 25 years of microfinance activities, programmes and banks that were administered by sister agencies within the Aga Khan Development Network. The underlying objectives of AKAM are to reduce poverty, diminish the vulnerability of poor populations and alleviate economic and social exclusion. AKAM is a not-for-profit, non-denominational, international development agency created under Swiss law and it has 13 microcredit operations and two microinsurance operations in 13 countries. Its headquarters are in Geneva, Switzerland. It is governed by a Board of Directors and the Chairman of the Board is His Highness the Aga Khan.