General budget support: has it benefited the health sector?

There has been recent controversy about whether aid directed specifically to health has caused recipient governments to reallocate their own funds to non-health areas. At the same time, general budget support (GBS) has been increasing. GBS allows governments to set their own priorities, but little is known about how these additional resources are subsequently used.

Is universal coverage via social health insurance financially feasible in Swaziland?

Objective: The Government of Swaziland decided to explore the feasibility of social health insurance (SHI) in order to enhance universal access to health services. We assess the financial feasibility of a possible SHI scheme in Swaziland. The SHI scenario presented is one that mobilises resources additional to the maintained Ministry of Health and Social Welfare (MOHSW) budget.

The role of institutional design and organizational practice for health financing performance and universal coverage.

Many low- and middle income countries heavily rely on out-of-pocket health care expenditure. The challenge for these countries is how to modify their health financing system in order to achieve universal coverage. This paper proposes an analytical framework for undertaking a systematic review of a health financing system and its performance on the basis of which to identify adequate changes to enhance the move towards universal coverage.

Mutual health insurance in Rwanda: evidence on access to care and financial risk protection.

Objective: Rwanda has expanded mutual health insurance considerably in recent years, which has a great potential for making health services more accessible. In this paper, we examine the effect of mutual health insurance (MHI) on utilization of health services and financial risk protection.

Methods: We used data from a nationally representative survey from 2005-2006.

Assessing the reliability of household expenditure data: results of the World Health Survey.

The World Health Survey (WHS) which has been implemented in more than 70 countries with standardized questionnaires opens a great opportunity for research on health care financing issues. This study examines the household expenditures and health expenditure collected in the WHS in terms of reliability, consistency between different ways of data collection within the survey and with other types of household surveys. Data used in this study include 50 WHS and 37 other type of surveys, namely the Living Standard Measurement Survey, Household Budget Survey and Income and Expenditure Survey.