25-26 Oct 2011: The Joint Review Mission (JRM) was held on 25 – 26 October, and focused on trends in health financing, as well as the challenges of funding key aspects of service delivery. Notable topics of discussion were: – the wage bill; incentives for health workers; increasing the non-wage recurrent allocation to districts; ensuring sustainability of programmes that are largely donor funded; efficiency in health spending; and the institutionalisation of the National Health Accounts (NHA).
After the JRM, a meeting attended by the World Health Organization (WHO), the World Bank (WB), the Ministry of Health (MoH) (present were Director of Planning, Assistant Commissioner of Planning, and colleagues from the Budget and Finance division and Planning division) discussed a road map to finalise the health financing strategy and support requested from P4H. This road map will be drawn up under the overall leadership of the Director Planning and Development and will include:
- Putting together a team to spearhead development of the health financing strategy by 9 Nov;
- Reviewing the health financing synthesis paper developed by P4H, providing comments and finalizing the paper by 16 Nov;
- Consulting with top management using the synthesis paper by 2 Dec;
- Further refining the synthesis paper and consulting with selected stakeholders outside of the MoH;
- Drafting the health financing strategy – draft to be ready by March 2012
- Undertaking final consultations and producing a final draft by May 2010.
P4H will assist in finalisation of the synthesis paper, and support drafting of the health financing strategy, working with the health financing strategy team.
