User fee removal in the health sector in low-income countries:
lessons from recent national initiatives
Edited by Bruno Meessen, Lucy Gilson and Abdelmajid Tibouti
Health Policy and Planning - Volume 26, Supplement 2 - November 2011
Available free online at: http://bit.ly/zTUg1n
This supplement, sponsored by Unicef, focuses on the challenges related to the design and implementation of user fee removal policies in low-income countries.
"User fees have triggered impassioned discussions in international health over the last two decades. Promoted by a number of international organizations since the late 1980s as a strategy to finance struggling public health facilities in many low-income countries, recent years have seen growing criticism of the impact of fees on access to health services, particularly for the poorest groups.....
In mid-2008, UNICEF approached a group of researchers with the request to document recent experience with user fee removal. While aid actors in the North were still arguing fiercely about the pros and cons of user fees, a growing number of countries had already decided to remove user fees, at least for some priority services.... A consensus was easily reached between UNICEF and the research team led by the
This focus was seen as valuable because it could generate practical lessons for other countries interested in such a step.... the research team judged that the main question of the multi-country review—the challenges related to design and implementation of user fee removal policies—deserved more visibility than just another report....
Our objectives for this supplement were multiple. From the start we decided we would welcome contributions from different regions and fields of expertise, as the supplement had to be useful for researchers, but also for programme officers and policy makers directly involved in health care financing policies in low-income countries. We acknowledged that contributors would adopt different types of methodological approaches to address different questions. We were also keen to get contributions from the different ‘corners’ of the user fee debate. Experts familiar with the controversy can see for themselves that this objective has been achieved; a glance at the list of contributors to this supplement suffices...."
The full supplement is available free online:
Volume 26 suppl 2 November 2011
User fee removal in low-income countries:
sharing knowledge to support managed implementation [Editorial].
Bruno Meessen 1,*, Lucy Gilson 2,3 and Abdelmajid Tibouti 4
1Department of Public Health, Institute of Tropical Medicine, Antwerp, Belgium, 2School of Public Health and Family Medicine, University of Cape Town, South Africa, 3Department of Global Health & Development, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, UK and 4UNICEF, New York, USA
“………..As international organizations, development partners have also a major responsibility in terms of knowledge management. It is our firm belief that real efforts must be made at regional level to bring together relevant knowledge—not just formal evidence—to support fee removal and improvements in financial access. A top priority should be to remove the walls between the different ‘niches’ of knowledge: policy makers, scientists, operational actors and aid agencies must learn to develop knowledge together (Meessen et al. 2011). Countries should also better share lessons of experience and good practices. There is, therefore, a need for much better collective learning……….”
Removing user fees for health services in low-income countries: a multi-country review framework for assessing the process of policy change
Removing user fees in the health sector: a review of policy processes in six sub-Saharan African countries
The national subsidy for deliveries and emergency obstetric care in Burkina Faso
Abolition of user fees: the
Can innovative health financing policies increase access to MDG-related services? Evidence from
The sudden removal of user fees: the perspective of a frontline manager in Burundi
Abolishing user fees for children and pregnant women trebled uptake of malaria-related interventions in
The national free delivery policy in
Removing user fees for basic health services: a pilot study and national roll-out in
Removing user fees: learning from international experience to support the process
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