On May 1, bearing in mind the true spirit of labour, 35 committed people including partners of the P4HC+ network, H-EQIP mid-term review team and other guests headed to the World Bank office for the second thematic meeting of 2019. These include As usual the host provided great sandwiches which is gratefully acknowledged. The topic on Labour Day was monitoring for financial risk protection with the objective of taking stock of scheduled activities related to SDG indicator 3.8.1 and making suggestions for the way forward.
Bart (GIZ/P4H) provided an overview of the rationale and approaches for monitoring UHC in general and the situation in Cambodia in particular. For the latter it was noted that there is yet no indigenous institute able to regularly and timely conduct the analyses for measuring financial risk protection. There are also no agreed indicators for monitoring service coverage. Trainings are in the pipeline for members of the National Institute of Public Health and the General Secretariat to the National Social Protection Council to respectively conduct the analyses and to critically appraise the results. The first of these trainings focuses on handling large secondary data sets, more particular the Socio-Economic Survey that happens every five years using a sample of 12,000 households. In-between there are annual surveys with a sample of about 3,800 households. It was suggested to also include representatives of the National Institute of Statistics, who produce the respective dataset, as well as the Department of Planning and Health Information of the Ministry of Health in the training. To formulate and reach consensus for service coverage indicators it was suggested to elicit the possibility for the Joint Learning Network to moderate the process.
Robert (HP+) presented the audience the framework and associated tool for monitoring social protection activities as detailed in the National Social Protection Policy Framework. The indicators focus on poverty, vulnerability and (in)equity and enable the tracking of inputs, outputs, outcomes and goals. Al these are presented in a user-friendly dashboard. There was, however, some cautious remark about the selected indicators for the service coverage dimension.
Somil (World Bank) explained the elaborated M&E system for the US$175m pooled funding arrangements known as the Health Equity and Quality Improvement Program. The indicators focus on the Health equity Fund utilisation but also on financial risk protection, amongst others. Additionally, the program’s quality enhancement component has been rolled out to two thirds of the country with nationwide coverage expected by July of this year. From then onwards quality performance scores for all public health facilities will be available on a quarterly basis, greatly aiding the reporting of the public health facilities’ performance for the National Social Protection Council.
The last presentation was by Erik (WHO) on the Cambodian Socioeconomic Survey questionnaire and how it could be improved to increase the accuracy for measuring financial risk protection.
Great discussions ensued but these have not been recorded, and can thus not be reported, as everybody got dragged into the debate.
