Financing Health services through user fees and insurance: Case studies from Sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract

The case studies reported in this volume focus on user fees and self financing health insurances as a means of contribution to improved health sector efficiency, equity and sustainable financing. The challenge facing policy-makers is how to tap resources that African households seem ensuring that people receive good value for money. User fees are emphasize as a form of cost-sharing because private, out-of-pocket expenditures for health account for nearly one half of total health expenditures in Africa. The country experiences present here distill lessons learned on does and don'ts, as well as benefits to be gained by carefully designed user-charge policies. Self-financing health insurance is emphasized because this type of insurance enable many people to pool their resources to provide coverage for catastrophic illness or injury. The evidence presented here suggests that self-financing insurance is more prevalent that had been previously though in many countries. Nurturing such...