Email 
Print 
Saving the lives of African children by waiving health care payments
Written by: George Fominyen
Child-sensitive social protection is of critical importance in West and Central Africa: it has the highest regional under-five mortality rate in the world at 169 per 1,000 live births and accounts for more than 30 percent of global maternal deaths, according to UNICEF. A policy brief released this week on the Day of the African Child by the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) in London highlights that financial constraints are a key reason preventing children and women from getting better access to health care in a context of widespread poverty. "There aren't sufficient government subsidies for health services, so the fees have to be paid when people visit the clinics rather than having a broader social insurance system or exemption from fees," Nicola Jones, one of the brief's authors, told AlertNet. Ghana is an example where a national health insurance scheme, set up in 2004, covers more than half the population (54 percent). This has resulted in a decline in maternal and child mortality rates. There is growing interest and policy debates about social protection in the region, as well as an array of pilot initiatives at local and regional level. Save the Children UK has been involved in policy discussions with governments in Liberia, Niger and Sierra Leone, which have introduced selective or targeted waivers to children under 5 and to pregnant and breastfeeding women. Terres des Hommes has been implementing a user fee exemption in two health districts as part of its action to tackle malnutrition in Burkina Faso. They operate a scheme to reimburse the primary health care centres for the free services provided. "We have observed a 230 percent rise in visits to the local health centre at the Tougan health district in Burkina Faso, since we started a fees exemption scheme for children under 5, pregnant and breastfeeding women," Thierry Agagliate of Terres des Hommes told AlertNet. "There has also been a 20 percent increase in the number of assisted deliveries at the local health centre." In Niger, where the government already decided on free access to health care to children under the age of 5, lactating mothers and pregnant women, the international NGO Help says it has been able to multiply user rates by two or three times in two districts. In Mali and Senegal community-based mutual health care schemes have been introduced. Groups of people pool resources so that if members of the community have a health emergency they can be supported. An alternative mechanism explored by the ODI report is social health insurance that finances and manages health care through the pooling of health risks of its members, covered by a combination of financial contributions by employers, households and the government.
Reuters AlertNet is not responsible for the content of external websites.
We welcome argument but AlertNet will not publish comments that are racist, abusive or libellous.
Leave a Reply
When you submit a comment to us we request your name, e-mail address and optionally a link to a website. Please note where you submit a website address, we may link to it via your name. By sending us a comment, you accept that we have the right to show the comment and your name to users. Although we require your email address, this will not be published on the site, and is only required to enable us to check facts with you, e.g. if you are making a claim we can not confirm easily. Additionally, if you would like your comment removed at anytime, you'll have to use this e-mail address when you contact us. To remove a comment at any time please e-mail us at blogs-(at)-reuters-(dot)-com (address obscured to avoid spam) specifying who you are and what you would like removed. We moderate all comments and will publish everything that advances the post directly or with relevant tangential information. We reserve the right to edit comments in order to maintain the quality of the comments, and may not include links to irrelevant material. We try not to publish comments that we think are offensive or appear to pass you off as another person, and we will be conservative if comments may be considered libelous. Reuters will use your data in accordance with Reuters privacy policy. Reuters Group is primarily responsible for managing your data. As Reuters is a global company your data will be transferred and available internationally, including in countries which do not have privacy laws but Reuters seeks to comply with its privacy policy.
Unlike some other content on this website, the written content in this article may be republished or redistributed by any means free of charge. Any use of photographs and graphics on this website is expressly prohibited. You must check whether written content contained in other articles on this website may be republished or redistributed without the express permission of Reuters or the relevant third party provider.
