Universal Health Coverage

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UNIVERSAL HEALTH COVERAGE:
A Scoping Report: Burundi

Introduction:
Universal Health Coverage (UHC) endeavours to ensure that everyone obtains the health care that they need, but that it is affordable to everyone. Simultaneously, the health care received by citizens must be of a good quality, according the WHO.
Universal Health Coverage is divided by the World Health Organisation into two components: Health Service Coverage and Financial Risk Protection, of which there are numerous indicators used to measure the programme’s progress. Of these many indicators, I have analysed and selected a few which I believe are relevant for the chosen country, Burundi. Burundi is classed as a low income country by the World Bank (less than $1035) and its struggles with former healthcare schemes and civil wars make it an interesting country to review.
The indicators I have chosen to use are bullet pointed in the ‘Data Review’ section, combined with a critical appraisal.

Data Review:
• Under-five mortality rate, per 1000 live births
As shown in the population pyramid (figure 1) below, Burundi’s population is extremely young, the most dominant age category being 0-4 years, with approximately 960,000 people. Consequently, it is appropriate to measure the progress of Universal Health Coverage via the under-five mortality rate. Considering that such a large proportion of the population is young, the aforementioned indicator is a relevant determinant of UHC. This is imperative as the productivity of human capital is dependent on health.

In addition, U5MR does not account for the number of stunted or otherwise unhealthy live children. Consequently, the decrease in U5MR could be considered a misleadingly huge achievement, if a signi...

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...s that much of its data is obtained from the statistical systems of member countries and that the quality of their data is dependent on “how well these national systems perform”.

• Country specific barriers
Burundi is “one of the world’s poorest nations”, according to the BBC (2014). The country’s poor economic growth combined with their twelve-year civil war and lack of cultural progress are significant country-specific barriers in the implementation of UHC. For example, we can look back to 1984, when the La Carte d’Assurance Maladie was implemented. This scheme allowed women to obtain healthcare without consulting their male counterparts by “eliminating cash payments at the point of use”. (UHC Forward, n.d.) However, the scheme was not successful due to low participation rates and the fact that high-risk households tended to be the sole utilisers of the scheme.

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