Selected country experiences
Nepal
Nepal remains confronted with key challenges to meet the population's health care needs. The inability of government expenditure to respond to this challenge calls for alternative health care financing mechanisms. This was highlighted also in Nepal's Long-Term Health Plans, Development Plans and the Medium-Term Expenditure Framework. Yet, an important impetus would also come from a new comprehensive health financing policy aiming to reach universal coverage and to eliminate catastrophic expenditures. There have been some community financing pilot programmes, health cooperatives and a hospital-based social micro-insurance scheme, but overall two-thirds of the total health spending is out-of-pocket expenditure and therefore a significant burden on households.
The publication of the WHO country cooperation strategy 2006-2011 (CCS) coincides with the Government's request to WHO to assist in developing a national health financing policy. This is one of the priority areas as agreed in the CCS and to kick-start this process Mr. Ramchandra M. Singh (Health Secretary / Government of Nepal) held a number of meetings with WHO Health Financing Policy (HSF/HFP) and other colleagues in WHO Health Systems Financing (HSF).
The following presentation, held at one of these meetings, gives an overview of health financing policy issues, including community based health financing, social health insurance, mixed financing systems and new approaches.
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Presentation: The development of health financing systems in low-income developing countries
pdf, 988kb - Documents
- Health financing mechanisms
- Tools, training and capacity development
Dr Xu Ke (WHO Health Financing Policy (HFS/HFP)), Dr Guy Carrin (Coordinator, HSF/HFP), Mr. Ramchandra M. Singh (Health Secretary/Government of Nepal), Dr Shambhu Acharya (WHO Country Focus), Mr. Ole Doetinchem (HSF/HFP), Nov 2006