PHM-Exch> Oxfam, Global Health Check - a new online debating space

[Claudio Schuftan]

From: Anna Marriott <AMarriott at oxfam.org.uk>




Please join Global Health Check, a new online space designed to provoke
debate and conversation on health financing and service delivery. Global
Health Check is edited by Anna Marriott, Health Policy Advisor for Oxfam GB,
and in the coming weeks the site will feature contributions from a variety
of authors.

This first post for Global Health Check reviews recent evidence on the
impact of removing user fees for mothers and children in Sierra Leone one
year after the policy was first introduced. To read the post online visit
Global Health Check:
http://www.globalhealthcheck.org/

To subscribe to Global Health Check please visit:
http://www.globalhealthcheck.org/?page_id=199



Here is the first post, on our exciting new platform:

*One year on: the impact of removing health care user fees in Sierra Leone
*
While there are still some commentators who seem stuck on the  question of
whether removing fees for health care in poor countries is a good idea at
all - thankfully there are others who have moved on to the much more
critical question of not whether this should happen - but how.

The recent World Health Report on Health Financing for Universal Coverage
leaves no doubt that user fees are a bad idea. In the Director General’s own
words, they constitute "by far the greatest obstacle to progress" on the
path to universal access.

Learning how to successfully remove fees is best done by looking at those
countries that have made that bold step forward. The introduction of free
care for pregnant women and children in 2010 in Sierra Leone - a
post-conflict nation with a crumbling and severely under-resourced health
system and one of the highest rates of maternal deaths in the world -
provides very relevant lessons for the numerous other low-income countries
facing similar challenges.

READ THE REST OF THIS POSTING ONLINE; ADDRESS ABOVE.

Anna Marriott
Health Policy Advisor
Development Finance and Public Services Team Oxfam GB
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