Universal health insurance in Africa: a narrative review of the literature on institutional models
Equitable health financing where costs are shared within a population based on everyone’s contributory capacity is critical for Universal Health Coverage (UHC). Several African countries have introduced Universal Health Insurance (UHI) programmes with the aim of...
Can National Health Insurance pave the way to Universal Health Coverage in sub-Saharan Africa?
African leaders across the continent have made bold commitments to attain Universal Health Coverage (UHC). One way to show this commitment has been through exploring National Health Insurance Schemes (NHIS). In this study, the authors examine African country...
Health coverage and financial protection in Uganda: A political economy perspective
It has been over 20 years since Uganda abolished user-fees to improve access to health services and reduce the financial burden of accessing care. However, household out-of-pocket expenditures are still persistently very high contributing 42% of total health...
Health Financing System Assessment in Papua New Guinea
The document provides an analysis of the economic, demographic, and disease burden context, the health system structure, human resources for health and health expenditure in the country. It includes detailed information and analysis of the health expenditure trends,...
Equality in financial access to healthcare in Cambodia from 2004 to 2014
"Using the World Health Organization's methods for the analysis of healthcare expenditure and household survey data from 2004, 2009 and 2014 Cambodian Socio-Economic Survey, the authors assessed trends in reported illness, utilization of healthcare services and...
Assessing the feasibility and appropriateness of introducing a National Health Insurance Scheme in Malawi
Malawi’s interest in social health insurance dates back to 2011 as a means to reduce donor dependency and increase domestic resource mobilization for health. In May 2015 the Malawian Ministry of Health (MOH) contacted one of its external partners to conduct an...
Decomposing socio-economic inequality in catastrophic out-of-pocket health expenditures in Malawi
Socio-economic inequality in out-of-pocket health expenditures entails disparities in the burden of catastrophic health expenditures which worsens inequalities in access to and utilization of health services. Addressing the factors contributing to the inequalities is...
Strategies for financing social health insurance schemes for providing universal health care: a comparative analysis of five African countries (Ghana, Kenya, Ethiopia, Rwanda and Tanzania)
Social health insurance is increasingly being considered as a mechanism for providing financial protection and moving towards Universal Health Coverage (UHC). In recent years there has been a political will and interest to explore the implementation of National Health...
Governance factors that affect the implementation of health financing reforms in Tanzania: an exploratory study of stakeholders’ perspectives
Tanzania has been reforming health financing policies to expand health insurance coverage and achieve better access to quality healthcare for all. Recent reforms have included improved community health funds (iCHFs). Other reforms that are underway include the...
Examining the level and inequality in health insurance coverage in 36 sub- Saharan African countries
Many low/middle-income countries (LMICs) are increasingly prioritising UHC and reforming their health systems to accelerate progress to achieve this target. To reduce the financial burden of care and improve financial risk protection, many of these countries are...