Cristina Manzanares

The P4H Country Focal Person in Mozambique supports the Ministry of Health

Cristina Manzanares, the P4H country focal person (P4H-CFP) in Mozambique, is based in the Department of Planning and Cooperation of the Ministry of Health of Mozambique (MISAU). She is contracted by Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) with financing from the Swiss Agency for Development Cooperation (SDC). Cristina works collaboratively on technical issues, providing advisory and coordination support to MISAU and development partners.

Technical support to the Ministry of Health

Cristina provides technical assistance in health financing to the MISAU’s Department of Planning and Cooperation. Her focus areas are universal health coverage and equity in funding and resource aggregation. These areas comprise pooling, internal financing and taxes, allocation and public expense analysis, user fees and financial protection, and sector efficiency). Cristina supported the development of the Health Sector Financing Strategy in a process of analysis, debate and collaboration that included participants from MISAU, other ministries (public function, labour and social security), civil society and cooperation partners.

Support for partner coordination in health financing

MISAU and its development partners (under the Kaya Kwanga Commitment) have a technical working group (TWG) on planning, financing and strategic investment that is led by the ministry (chair) and a development partner representative (co-chair, currently the World Bank Group (WBG)). This group includes the main development partners active in health financing, such as WHO and WBG. The TWG is supported with a range of technical assistance from the Global Financing Facility, the World Bank, GIZ and Enabel (the development agency of Belgium). In this context, Cristina focuses on health financing, supporting the analysis of sector financing (effective universal health coverage, public expenditure, financial protection and efficiency), and facilitating discussion on related policies. The TWG is an example of aligning actors and actions around a shared agenda of health financing, with a particular focus on domestic resource mobilization and its effective allocation.