During the first week of July, GIZ P4H Sector Project representatives visited Cambodia for a week to respond to a request by the Ministry of Health to develop the National Social Health Protection Fund.
This fund will be a semi-autonomous institute, termed Public Administrative Enterprise in the Khmer public administration, that will operate under the Ministry of Health and act as the health insurance scheme for the informal sector population. Initially the institute will take over the role of the Health Equity Fund Implementer, the organization that currently audits and verifies performances by contracted health providers and NGOs managing the health equity funds at district level. This organization is currently University Research Co Ltd.
The visit aimed at clarifying outstanding issues concerning the scope of the exercise as well as identifying stakeholder preferences regarding institute. Several discussions evolved also about the nature of the methodology to be applied for identifying critical elements for the creation of the institute. As such they met with the Directors of the Department of Planning and Health Information, MoH and National Social Security Office, Ministry of Labour as well as various development partners.
Conclusions of the mission were to initially develop the methodology to conduct a functional analysis by closely examining the institutional arrangements and support requirements of URC, the semi-autonomous National Social Security Fund and the Department of Planning and Health Information. Once this methodology is developed, the analysis will be conducted (in September) and the strategy to develop the National Social Security Fund formulated in a document. This document should allow development partners to harmoniously contribute to establishing the institute.
