By Staff Reporter
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.
