World Bank’s High-Frequency Phone Surveys on COVID-19, 2020 (HFPS) and the Ethiopia Socioeconomic Survey, 2018-19 (ESS) are used to assess whether families got help during the pandemic, how quickly they got it, and whether government assistance benefited the...
Fighting HIV/AIDS in Cameroon: A plea for a reduction in household costs
The Director of Onusida in Cameroon deplores the fact that 70% of payments for HIV/AIDS-related services are still borne by households. This poses a real problem of access to care for vulnerable people. However, the elimination of fees for HIV-AIDS services, which had...
COVID-19, poverty, and social safety net response in Zambia
What has the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic been on poverty in Zambia, and how can social protection programs mitigate these effects? This paper estimates the pre-pandemic poverty level in Zambia and then simulates the distributional impact of COVID-19 in the...
Hardship financing of out-of-pocket (OOP) payments in the context of free healthcare in Zambia
High levels of out-of-pocket spending have been shown to be one of the biggest health reasons people fall into poverty when accessing care, or choose to forgo care. Globally it is estimated that 100 million people are pushed into poverty every year due to exorbitant...
Leading the Charge: Insight into Zambia’s Sexual and Reproductive Health Advocacy in Universal Health Coverage Financing Reforms
Access to affordable family planning is an essential component of universal health coverage (UHC) as it is one of the most effective interventions that have shown to reduce maternal and under- mortality rates. For Zambia, to include Family Planning (FP) in the...
DRC: access to healthcare a challenge for the elderly
For Gilbert Tshibangu, a teacher at the Institut Supérieur du Commerce in Kinshasa, this is the first time that an elected President of the DRC has expressed his willingness to offer his people universal health coverage. On the initiative of President Félix...
MALI: The National Transitional Council adopts the RAMU
General Boubacar Dembele can be proud of his plea. He now has the backing of Mali's parliamentarians to extend compulsory health insurance benefits to several of Mali's underprivileged groups. The head of the national health insurance fund is confident that...
Mauritania: 100,000 low-income families to benefit from health insurance
This was an election promise by the President, and it has been kept. The first health insurance cards have been allocated to vulnerable families, in line with the commitment made by Mohamed Ould Cheikh El Ghazouani, who was elected two years ago. This initiative paves...
Workshop to validate the report of the study on the methodology for targeting the poor. Mara, 09-10.03.2021
The Cellule Interministérielle de Coordination de la CSU organized in Mara from 09-10.03.2021, the validation workshop of the study report on the definition of the methodology for the identification of destitute people, target population of the Medical Assistance...
Thai Cabinet approves 311.6 million baht to fund efforts to address Covid 19 outbreaks in prisons
311.6 million baht, to be taken from the Thai government's central budget, was approved to cover the cost of Covid-19 containment measures adopted by prisons and correctional facilities in the country. The money will be used to buy 100,000 sets of RT PCR Covid-19 test...
Household economic burden of non-communicable diseases in India
Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) in India have assumed significant proportions in contributing to the overall disease burden over the past 30 years. In 2017, NCDs accounted for 63.7% of all mortality and was a major contributor to the cost of treatment for inpatient...
Burkina Faso: a health mutual enrolls a hundred sickle-cell-affected children
In the absence of a national program to combat sickle cell anemia, the " Project to support the fight against sickle cell disease in Burkina Faso "The project was carried out by the consortium of the Ministry of Health, CID/Burkina and GIH, with financial...
Bangladesh Prime Minister assures adequate supply of Covid 19 vaccines irrespective of procurement costs
Bangladesh PM Sheikh Hasina has assured that her government will procure COVID-19 vaccines at any cost, and has also allocated financial help for marginalized families. An amount of over 1,500 crore Bangladeshi Takas has been allocated to ease the sufferings of...
Malaysia Government assures vaccination for PWDs unregistered with the Social Welfare Department
The Malaysian government has given an assurance that persons with disabilities (PWDs) who are not registered with the Social Welfare Department (JKM) would not be left out of the National Covid 19 Immunization Programme. As part of its policy to leave no one behind,...
Bangladeshis’ woes deepen amid COVID 19 and lack of health coverage
Despite having one of the world’s fastest-growing economies, Bangladesh is lagging far behind in providing standard health care services to its over 166 million people, which is deepening their woes amid the coronavirus pandemic. Their budget for the health sector is...