| Theme area | Resource allocation and health financing |
| Author | Health Economics Unit University of Cape Town; HealthNet Consult; EQUINET |
| Title of publication | Regional Workshop Report: Fair financing for health: mobilising domestic resources and managing commercialisation of health systems |
| Date of publication | 2009 September |
| Publication type | Report |
| Publication details | EQUINET Workshop Report, 22 September 2009, Munyonyo, Uganda. UCT HEU, HNC, EQUINET: Harare - |
| Publication status | Published |
| Language | |
| Keywords | domestic resources; fair financing; east and southern Africa |
| Abstract | The promotion of universal coverage means that health systems should seek to ensure that all citizens have access to adequate health care (adequately staffed with skilled and motivated health workers) at an affordable cost and which improve both income cross-subsidies (from the rich to the poor) and risk cross-subsidies (from the healthy to the ill) in the overall health system. This stems from our understanding of equity, which requires that people should contribute to the funding of health services according to their ability to pay and benefit from health services according to their need for care. Prior work in the fair financing theme in the network indicates that there is still a heavy dependence on donor funding in some east and southern African (ESA) countries and heavy burdens on poor people through high levels of out of pocket financing. There have been efforts to increase domestic funding of health services, and a number of countries are increasing government funding of health services. The Health Economics Unit, University of Cape Town and HealthNet Consult Uganda used evidence from work done in the past 5 years on tax and mandatory health insurance sources of domestic resource mobilisation as inputs to a regional research and policy review meeting in September 2009. The meeting presented and reviewed research, implemented in and beyond the network, on domestic public resource mobilisation; examined policy options, and country experiences in and barriers to improving domestic public resource mobilisation, with a focus on ‘success stories’ where countries have been successful in motivating for greater allocation of public resources towards the health sector. The meeting was held in Uganda just prior to the EQUINET Regional conference to connect delegates to the conference and to input into the wider network of equity actors and debates at the conference. The meeting identified knowledge gaps for follow up research, including on gender dimensions. |
| Country | East and southern Africa region |
| Publisher | EQUINET |
| Url | REPfinSEP09.pdf |
| Equinet Publication Type | Reports |