Research Article Population Characteristics and Their Implications on the Benefit Basket of National Social Health Insurance Scheme in Sierra Leone: A Prospective View Abraham Isiaka Jimmy, 1 Kwabena Anarﬁ Boateng, 2 Peter Twum , 2 Deborah Larbie, 2 Abdul Bangura, 3 Hassan Milton Conteh, 4 and Peter Agyei-Baﬀour 2 1 University of Makeni, Makeni, Sierra Leone 2 Department of Health Policy Management and Economics, School of Public Health, College of Health Sciences, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Kumasi, Ghana 3 M´ edecins Sans Fronti` eres (MSF), Makeni, Sierra Leone 4 Sierra Leone Ministry of Health and Sanitation, Makeni, Sierra Leone Correspondence should be addressed to Peter Twum; twumpeter2000@yahoo.com Received 18 January 2021; Revised 19 February 2021; Accepted 23 February 2021; Published 8 March 2021 Academic Editor: Hamidreza Karimi-Sari Copyright©2021AbrahamIsiakaJimmyetal.isisanopenaccessarticledistributedundertheCreativeCommonsAttribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Background. e government of Sierra Leone introduced social health insurance (SHI) scheme to provide universal health coverage to people. is study was carried out to assess the population characteristics and their implications on the beneﬁt basket of the proposed national health insurance scheme. Methods. A cross-sectional study design was employed in six selected districts in Sierra Leone. Quantitative data were collected for this study through the use of semistructured questionnaires with a sample of 1,185 respondents. Data were analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics. Statistical analysis was run at 5% signiﬁcant level using Stata 14.0 software. Results. e study found that most (83.54%) of the respondents aﬃrmed that children below 18 years should be excluded from premium payments and as high as 71.65% also stated that pregnant women should be excluded as well. e majority, 63.69%, of the respondents want lactating mothers to be excluded from premium payments. Also, 79.87% of respondents wanted mentally challenged persons not to pay premium, while a signiﬁcant proportion (84.26%) of respondents further aﬃrmed that the aged (above 70yrs) should also be excluded from premium payment. Most household heads (89.71%) preferred the accreditation of public health facilities. Regarding the level at which healthcare services should be covered by the scheme, 61.45% preferred the primary care services, 89% mentioned secondary care services, and 98.93% aﬃrmed the provision of tertiary care under the scheme. As for the type of care that should be covered by the scheme, 98.66% and 99.73% aﬃrmed outpatient and inpatient care, respectively. Conclusion. From the ﬁndings on population characteristics and their implications on the beneﬁt basket for the proposed nation social health in Sierra Leone, most of the household heads want exemptions from paying premium for a section of the population. is provides a clear insight for policy makers into the formulation of the beneﬁt basket. 1. Background A number of low and middle income countries (LMICs) have realised the diﬃculties associated with how to sustain suﬃcient ﬁnancing for healthcare, most especially for the poor [1–3]. In view of this, international policy makers and other stakeholders have been recommending a variety of suitable measures, in- cluding, but not limited to, various kinds of health insurance schemes, one of which is social health insurance (SHI) [4, 5]. is can help to move away from out-of-pocket payments for healthcare at the time of use with prepayment health insurance towards mitigating the ﬁnancial hardship associated with paying for health services [6]. e World Health Organisation (WHO) passed a res- olution in 2005 that social health insurance should be supported as one of the strategies to be used to mobilise Hindawi Advances in Public Health Volume 2021, Article ID 5522384, 10 pages https://doi.org/10.1155/2021/5522384