Prospects for sustainable health financing in Tanzania: Baseline report
A high proportion of Tanzania’s total health spending comes from foreign donors and households’ out-of- pocket (OOP) spending, rather than from sustainable sources such as government tax-based revenue or health insurance. Over reliance on OOP can expose households to...
Universal health coverage (UHC) in Tanzania: Evaluating the potential of a public private partnership (PPP) in health financing system
In this paper, the author analyses how UHC is being implemented in the health financing system of Tanzania and also how PPPs are contributing towards the attainment of UHC. A cross sectional survey was conducted in the Kilimanjaro region in Tanzania to evaluate the...
Universal health coverage (UHC) in low-Income countries: Tanzania’s efforts to overcome barriers to equitable health service access
The Government of Tanzania has implemented a number of health sector reforms that promote UHC in the last two decades. This case study focuses primarily on the initiatives that foster UHC with a specific pro-poor lens. Tanzania’s efforts that can potentially benefit...
Is Kenya’s national hospital insurance fund (NHIF) amendment bill a silver bullet for universal health coverage (UHC)?
The NHIF amendment bill is part of Government of Kenya plan for achieving UHC. The goal of the UHC program is to provide health care for all based on need-not on ability to pay. One of the proposals in the 2021 NHIF amendment bill stipulates that all Kenyans must be...
Universal health care coverage (UHC): healthcare financing and access to health care services in Kenya
Reliance on out-of-pocket (OOP) payments to finance health care is a barrier to health care access and can result in the impoverishment of households. Health care in Kenya is financed from three main sources: OOP expenditure (households), government expenditure and...
“We are called the et cetera”: experiences of the poor with health financing reforms that target them in Kenya
Kenya has implemented a number of healthcare reforms, demonstrating its intention to extend financial risk protection and service coverage for poor and vulnerable groups. These reforms include the provision of free maternity services, user-fee removal in public...
Towards universal health coverage (UHC) in Kenya: are we on the right path?
The Kenyan government made a commitment to achieve UHC by the year 2022, embodied in the governments big 4 agenda that includes healthcare for all as one of the key development goals. Prioritizing UHC as a global and country health policy goal has highlighted the need...
The progressivity of health care financing in Kenya
Healthcare financing should be equitable to ensure equal access to quality care and financial risk protection from exorbitant health care costs, through social health protection. In many low and middle income countries including Kenya, changes to healthcare financing...
The path to universal health coverage (UHC) in Kenya: Repositioning the role of national hospital insurance fund (NHIF)
The NHIF was given a mandate by the Ministry of Health of Kenya to implement UHC in October, 2012. This generated controversy among key stakeholders concerned about allegations inefficiencies and precarious financial sustainability of the initiative. However, the...
Policy levers and priority-setting in universal health coverage (UHC): a qualitative analysis of healthcare financing agenda setting in Kenya
In light of the centrality of UHC in driving current health policy in Kenya, this paper examines the value interests that influence agenda setting in the country’s health financing space. Given the plurality of Kenya’s health policy levers, the authors aimed to...