Empowering and Strengthening
Health Financing Systems
Current Situation
Nigeria, and most low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) in Africa, rely heavily on foreign aid to fund their health sector. However, for countries unable to live up to the WHO Abuja Declaration enacted in September 2000, which stipulates that LMICs dedicate 15% of domestic resources to health sectors, this overreliance has proved to be a bane. The lack of consistent health financing and donor funding has led to poor health care infrastructure and inadequate resources.
Health Systems Strengthening
Our Approach
Our Health Financing team supports primary health care facilities and hospitals in Nigeria and across the African continent to strengthen financial management systems.
Addressing Knowledge Gaps
We offer analytical services, technical assistance (TA), and knowledge translation as well as develop, design, and implement evidence-based health financing strategies and policies that help governments provide equitable, efficient, and affordable health care to their citizens.
Strengthening Public Financial Management (PFM) Systems
We support governments, primary health care facilities, and hospitals through detailed bottleneck analyses to develop tailored solutions towards effective planning, better budget performance (ensuring that funds are released on time and spent efficiently), and greater technical efficiency.
Enabling Capacity Building
We align with national, state, and local health initiatives or reforms such as the Basic Health Care Provision Fund, Contributory Health Insurance Schemes, and Results-Based Financing mechanisms to provide tailored training and capacity building, as well as development of standardized tools and templates at both federal and state levels.
Helping Develop Sustainable Financing
Governments can develop strategies and reforms using our analytical support in the fields of costing of health services, health accounts, resource tracking (including public expenditure tracking surveys), fiscal space analysis, political economy analysis, health insurance feasibility studies, cost effectiveness analysis, and public financial management assessment and reviews.
Results
HSDF has experience working across most of the focus areas, supporting LMIC governments in health financing.
- We supported two states (>10 million population) in Nigeria to complete their first-ever sub-national health accounts, resource/expenditure tracking studies, and led the institutionalization of health financing analytics in a local University.
- We developed the first-ever assessment checklist for health insurance schemes in Nigeria and the first Results-Based Financing (RBF) typology to support assessments and designs of RBF mechanisms.
- We conducted studies on fiscal space analysis across multiple states in Nigeria to inform sustainability of public financing and interventions.
- We supported multiple states in Nigeria and Liberia on health services costing to inform planning for benefit packages and transitions from donor financing to domestic financing.