The technical work on the strategy has completed. It is now with the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare (MOHSW) for finalisation and approval.
The Ministry communicated, that instead of handing the strategy in for cabinet approval it will develop a cabinet paper for the Single National Health Insurance (SNHI) Legislation – it will be then submitting the HFS as supportive document to the SNHI Act request.
In the meantime Community Health Fund (CHF) scale-up will be tackelt as Health Financing (HF) priority in the interim (until SNHI established):
On the 17th April a CHF implementer’s meeting was facilitated by the HF TWG, during this meeting the different implementing partners of CHF: NHIF, GIZ, PharmAccess, SDC, HIMSO presented up-dates on their different CHF activities. It was interesting to see the best practices emerge from the different projects but also to note different bottle necks and challenges, particularly relating to delays or non-payment of matching funds as well as through relatively fragmented approaches of the different projects in the different regions/ districts they focus on.
The MOHSW decided to continue with regular meetings of the CHF implementers in order to guide them towards a more harmonised approach which works ultimately to achieving the principles layed out within the HFS. Particularly orienting the implementers towards creating a good CHF administration that is adaptable to become the foundation of the SNHI at district level in the long-run (i.e. be absorbed into the structures of a future SNHI).
The next CHF impelmenter’s meeting is envisaged to take place mid-August 2015. Main scope of this meeting will be to develop a joint roadmap for CHF priorities within the new financial year, with particular guidance of the MOHSW on which individual CHF approaches/ innovations to harmonise , adopt or reinforce among implementers (particularly also looking at the role of NHIF and its CHF mandate).
