In 2003, the Government of Tanzania adopted a Health Policy with the policy vision “to improve the health and well being of all Tanzanians with a focus on those most at risk […]”. This vision remains still valid, and the GOT is committed to moving towards Universal Health Coverage and to ensure that all citizens have access to quality services and be protected from financial risk. As part of the Health Sector Strategic Plan III, a decision was taken to develop a Health Financing Strategy (HFS) to ensure that this vision would become reality.
Oversight for the development of the Strategy has been given to an Interministerial Steering Committee (ISC), comprising of key ministries and departments, to ensure that proposed reforms be comprehensive, accepted and supported by all stakeholders, and implemented with the support of all stakeholders. To achieve this aim, the ISC has identified key areas for reforms and requested several reports to inform the development of the Strategy. These are:
- Insurance Market Structure: Options for the Social and Private Health Insurance architecture;
- Minimum Benefit Package(s): options to sustainably structure access to benefits;
- CHF reforms: options for the re-design of the CHF system;
- Inclusion of poor & vulnerable: options for identification and financing of services for this group;
- Performance financing: options for linking allocations to performance of service providers;
- Equity-based financing: options for improving the equity targeting of (esp. budget) resources;
- Private sector resources: options strengthening equitable funding from the private sector;
- Financial management: options for improving accountability and timely availability of funds;
- Innovative financing and fiscal space: options for increasing public financing for health;
Terms of Reference (TOR) have been developed and approved by the ISC for each focus area and the conducting of the studies has started in April 2013. Since then Studies 2, 4, 5 have been completed (but not yet endorsed), Study 6 is expected to be delivered this week, Study 1, 3, 7 are ongoing, Study 8 on PFM has just been kicked-off this week and the last Study to be initiated is the Fiscal Space Study (9) for which MOHSW is currently scoping out consultants.
The Studies are all commissioned by the MOHSW and funded by a variety of partners, all P4H members plus DANIDA:
- MBP (P4H/GIZ and USAID)
- IMS (P4H/GIZ)
- P4P (WB/ USAID/ DANIDA)
- Allocation Formula (DANIDA)
- Inclusion of the Poor (GIZ/ SDC)
- CHF (GIZ/ SDC)
- PPP (USAID)
- PFM (KfW/ USAID through Abt)
- Fiscal Space (KfW)
It is envisaged to have all studies completed by October 2013, when a HFS consolidation workshop would take place in order to link the different thematic strategic options and recommendations before presenting them to the ISC for further consideration and decision making.
view TORs:
