The WB approved a US$200 million International Development Association (IDA) credit to improve the quality of primary health care services in Tanzania, with a focus on maternal, neonatal, and child health services. The Strengthening Primary Health Care for Results Program will also be supported by US$40 million from the Global Financing Facility (GFF),
Tanzania is the first country to receive money from the newly established GFF as off July 2015.The Program will help the Government of Tanzania strengthen its primary health care, with a strong focus on the country’s Big Results Now in Health initiative. This initiative aims to improve maternal, neonatal, and child health in poor regions with the highest burden by strengthening performance, governance and accountability in the country’s primary health care system. By 2035, Program activities are expected to contribute to preventing as many as 1 million infant deaths and 84,000 maternal deaths.
The investment plan of the GFF for Tanzania is in the process of being developed by a WB assigned Business Development Unit in close collaboration with the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare and in regular consultation with key stakeholders. The investment plan will lay out the modalities of how the GFF funds will be flowing through the health care system in alignment to the current health financing reform discussions, hence the health financing strategy draft. Also the health financing strategy draft has taken up the new funding source through GFF into its concept and suggests eventual channeling of these funds through the single national health insurance pool, once created. In current absence of a Single National Health Insurer it is likely that the GFF funds will be channeled through on-budget modalities such as the health basket fund, which entails spending indicators in favor of improved Health Care for Women, Newborns and Children towards which GFF is geared.
