Insurance has only in recent years been introduced whereas pension schemes have been around longer but the limitations of either are vast and not attending to the needs of majority of Tanzanians.
Health care financing is among the key component of a functional health system. Financing involves three aspects, namely revenue collection, risk pooling, and purchasing. In recent years, there has been a growing demand for access to high-quality and affordable care for all, thus the government is committed to respond with a process of developing health financing strategy underway since early 2013. An inter-ministerial steering committee has been developed, composed of key ministries and department to ensure that the proposed reforms meet the needs of the population. Improving the prepayment mechanisms are the main agenda in the development of the strategy, which is assumed to be a potential facilitator in the progress towards UHC.
The Arusha Declaration in 1967 initiated by the founding father of the nation Mwalimu Julius Nyerere, outlined the principles of Ujamaa (Nyerere vision of social and economic policies) to develop the national economy. It marked the start of a series of health sector reforms with the intention of increasing universal access to social services to the poor and those living in marginalised rural areas.
However, by the early 1990s, the strain of providing free health care for all became evident in the face of rising health care costs and a struggling economy. Early 1990s the government adopted health sector reforms that changed the financing system from free services to mixed financing mechanisms including cost sharing policies.
In the same vein, a Local health organisation—Nordic Foundation Tanzania (NOFOTA) recently launched a three-month special campaign on medical insurance for all titled “Afyabando” which is designed to encourage ordinary citizens to have medical insurance for their wellbeing.
According to the lead consultant of special campaign on medical insurance the initiative is aimed at reaching the underserved communities in urban and rural areas such as the elderly, children and women.
Indeed health insurance coverage in Tanzania is still very low and as of June 2013 National Health Insurance Fund (NHIF) had covered about 6.6 per cent of the population while Community Health Fund (CHF) covers about 7.3 per cent of the population based on 2012 Census. Beneficiaries of NHIF include the contributing members, spouse and up to four dependants.
It is our hope that the campaign should scale up the health insurance coverage in Tanzania to at least 75 per cent of the country’s population.
This shows that the majority of Tanzanians lack completely medical insurance and some end up dying of preventable deaths.
We are also told that the fund, which will be obtained from the lottery will partly be used to purchase medical equipment and hospital consumables for few selected health centres, namely the Community Centre for Preventive Medicine (CCP) in Kinyerezi and a new medical facility called Tanzania Nordic Medical Centre in Kinyerezi.
It is also encouraging that the foundation had reached the decision to support Tanzanians with affordable health insurance cost for 500/- only whereby the citizen will get chance to engage in the public lottery that shall provide ten insurance cards to every ten winners in every week. We applaud this initiative as well.
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