Launch of the National Health Policy and the Human Resources for Health Strategic Plan
14th September 2018, BICC Lilongwe
The Hon. Minister of Health and Population and all involved stakeholders have launched an important key document to ensuring healthy lives and promoting well-being for all at all ages: The first ever National Health Policy.
Along with the Health Sector Strategic Plan II, the policy sets out to increase client satisfaction and financial risk protection towards achieving universal coverage for quality, equitable and affordable health care for the people of Malawi. The outlined policy objectives, guiding principles and the aspired linkages to other important policy areas such as education, nutrition, gender or decentralization provide a good framework to guide stakeholders on the path to UHC. Among the priority areas of the policy are cross-cutting issues such as population management as a key challenge for Malawi’s socio-economic development.
The government also emphasizes to gradually increase domestic contributions to the health sector to 15 % of the national budget as outlined already in the MGDS III, the HSSP II and now again in the National Health Policy; a commitment that is especially welcome against the fact that Malawi currently has one of the lowest per capita spending for health in the world and the total funding available (including resources from Development Partners) is also below the cost of implementation of the HSSP II. However, fiscal space to mobilize more resources for health is limited in Malawi and the overall budget is projected to continuously remain small due to the weak economic performance. That being the case, the Hon. Minister for Health and Population stressed that “We need to review how we are using our resources such that we learn to do more with what we have”; pointing towards the need for a much more thorough debate on efficiency and accountability in the health sector. The new policy includes these as guiding principles and acknowledges the importance of allocating scarce resources – from government, NGOs, private sector and development partners – in such a way that the best results possible are achieved. It also calls for an honest debate on absorption constraints and to join hands in removing these constraints together to make sure the resources that are already available are fully being put to use.
More resources and a more efficient use of resources need to go hand in hand. National ownership and leadership will be crucial for the successful implementation of the principles outlined in the Health Policy and to enhance efficiency in order to maximise the impact of available resources for the benefit of the people of Malawi. As such, the launch of the National Health Policy marks an important step towards Malawi’s vision of improving the health status of its population as a foundation to building prosperous societies.
