Health Systems Strengthening – Democratic Republic of Congo

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is one of Africa’s most rapidly growing economies. Since 2010 economic growth has exceeded the average for Sub-Saharan Africa by two percentage points, projected to reach over 10% growth in 2015. However, the DRC has some of the worst health and nutrition indicators in the world and is ranked last (#187) in the 2013 Human Development Report. As such, the DRC is not on track to achieve any of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), especially those related to Maternal and Child Health.

The higher level objective to which this project would contribute is to increase efficiency and effectiveness in the health system in order to improve human development outcomes. Improvements in efficiency and effectiveness, in turn, should boost confidence in these systems and may lead to an increase in overall investment in the social sectors.

Development Objective

The proposed project development objective is to improve utilization and quality of maternal and child health services in targeted areas.

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Health Insurance Subsidy Process Evaluation – Kenya

The African Health Markets for Equity (AHME) is a five-year project that aims to improve health outcomes through the provision of quality private sector health care targeting the poor in Kenya, Nigeria and Ghana. In Kenya, the AHME project is supporting the National Hospital Insurance Fund (NHIF) to design, test, and scale-up the Health Insurance Subsidy Program (HISP) that will serve as a mechanism for the Government of Kenya to subsidize NHIF insurance cover for the poorest households in Kenya.

To supplement a quantitative impact evaluation of the programme, the NHIF plans to carry out a process evaluation. The aim of the process evaluation is to assess programme implementation and provide information that will help implementers determine the degree to which the HISP intervention was implemented as planned (implementation fidelity).

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