Africa-Press – Zimbabwe. HEALTH experts have urged the government to provide funding to the health sector timeously to facilitate smooth operations.
Speaking on the sidelines of a stakeholder meeting on health financing, Community Working Group on Health executive director Itai Rusike said it was important as a country to come together and look at strategies in terms of strengthening domestic health financing.
“Sometimes we celebrate when the budget is announced and when we hear the figures in terms of the percentage allocations, especially to the health sector, and it is said that sometimes what is allocated is not necessarily what is disbursed,” Rusike said.
“As civil society, we continue advocating for the full disbursement of whatever is allocated, especially to the health sector, and a timely disbursement of those funds, not the current situation where sometimes you get to the end of the year and less than 50% of the budget has been disbursed.”
He said they wanted the issue of efficiency to be addressed, most importantly, the timely disbursement of the resources that are allocated, especially to the health sector.
“It’s also an opportunity for us to review and reflect on the various earmarked health taxes, as we are aware, given that the national health budget is not sufficient to address all the health needs of our population.
“The country has come up with various health financing strategies and these include the various earmarked health taxes, such as the sugar tax, the airtime tax and also the fast food tax, in an effort to try and mobilise additional resources,” he said.
The meeting also looked at the proposed national health insurance.
Rusike applauded the government for coming up with strategies to mobilise additional resources for the health sector.
“But it is also important for us to start interrogating the national health insurance in terms of, is it really people’s national health insurance and what it is that we are learning from other countries that have already implemented the national health insurance?”
Also speaking at the meeting, development economist Prosper Chitambara applauded the government for raising US$60 million in sugar tax but decried lack of its efficient use.
“As a way of fighting against cancer, financing the fight against cancer, the figures certainly show that to date we have raised about US$60 million through the sugar tax, which is quite significant. But unfortunately, the funds have not yet actually been disbursed in terms of the procurement of the cancer equipment, I think that is still a major challenge,” he said.
“One option of addressing that could be through learning from the Aids levy, where we have created the National Aids Trust Fund, where the funds mobilised from the Aids levy are actually deposited into that fund and they are then utilised or governed through the National Aids Council, which is a board that is representative of the key stakeholders in the country.”
Chitambara said there was need to create a framework to ring-fence the sugar tax.
“Because it’s been created specifically to help in the fight against NCDs and in particular cancer, so it would be critical to establish that, to ring-fence that, through supporting legislation. But also come up with a governance structure in terms of a board that is inclusive of key stakeholders, including the private sector, but also the communities and civil society organisations, and government, obviously, in the spirit of social dialogue,” he said.
The country’s health sector has been on its knees amid repeated calls for its revival.
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